While I have played many zombie games that simulate various horror film tropes, Dead Panic (by Fireside Games) is the first one I’ve found that focuses on that horror classic: the cabin in the woods. No, not the movie, but the trope of people being trapped in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but a few flimsy walls between themselves and whatever inhabits the woods. You know, like Night of the Living Dead or Evil Dead 1 & 2. Oh, sure Last Night on Earth has a scenario doing the same, but that’s one scenario… it’s not the focus of the game. In Dead Panic, the point of the entire game is to keep out the zombie hordes long enough to call for rescue.
So, what’s in the box? Cardboard, mostly. No fancy plastic minis for this game. All of the tokens and zombies and whatnot are good old-fashioned cardboard. This actually makes sense because the way the zombies with multiple hitpoints work fits much better with tokens. You’ve got little stand-ups for the players’ characters, and some stand-up walls to represent the cabin’s outer walls. You stand them up with the classic slotted chits that slide in perpendicular to the main body of the wall or character. This would normally be fine, except that the slots aren’t very snug. In fact, most slots are so loose that the chits normally just fall out if you don’t pick the stand up carefully, and sometimes even then. This could have been fixed by using plastic stands or making the fit a bit more snug. It’s annoying, but not so much that it ruins the game. There are also two decks, one is for items you can find in the cabin and the other is events that happen each turn. The events usually just tell you how many zombies to add to the board, but sometimes other things happen as well. The board is pretty neat. The play area is a hexagon divided into six “arcs”. The art is not the best, but still pretty good. It fits the theme very well and while I’d prefer slightly more serious, it’s not too cartoony. Also, since the play area is a hexagon (practically a circle) they put some play aides in the four corners of the board, which is always helpful, especially for newbies. And, finally, there are also bags. Both plastic bags to put the components into (always a nice consideration on the part of the publisher. Thank you!) and a cloth bag to put the zombie tokens into. This is where you draw the zombies from after drawing event cards.
Before I get to gameplay, I just want to say that the box says that the game is for 2-6 players. I would file this under “technically true, but still a blatant lie”. The game makes an effort at scaling the difficulty based on the number of players, but it doesn’t succeed very well. When I played with two players, we got overwhelmed easily, but with six players we had little trouble winning. I’d say the game is best with about four players, since that has just about the right amount of risk without being too difficult. Five is still fairly easy, but there is some risk, and three is pretty hard but you don’t need a miracle to win.
You start by setting up the walls of the cabin, and then randomly putting your chosen character in one of the cabin’s six rooms. Then you put all of the zombie tokens into the zombie bag, shake it up, draw out six, and put one in the outermost section in each arc. Then you add the three survivor tokens to the bag. Now the game starts and each player takes a turn performing two actions from a list (moving, drawing a cabin card, shooting, etc.) and then you draw an event card and see what happens. Event effects vary, but they always put more zombies on the board. Much of the time, if not most of the time, the number of zombies equals the number of players, but there are events with fixed numbers of zombies or variable numbers of zombies as well. After you resolve that, zombies either move towards the cabin or towards survivors/players if they can see them. Zombies can see anything on the half of the board they are on (that isn’t blocked by a wall) and move to the closest meal they can see. If they get to the cabin and can’t see anything to eat, they start breaking down the walls. A wall can take one damage before breaking open far enough for the zombies to get inside, so try to keep their numbers down and the walls repaired. Now, back to those survivors. The survivors are crucial, because they each carry a part of a radio that you can use to call for rescue. You draw them along with the zombie tokens and place them on the board as normal. They’ll make a beeline for the cabin, but might still get eaten by the zombies. If a survivor makes it to the cabin, then they drop the radio piece right there. If, however, the zombies kill them first, then you have to run out to where the now zombified survivor dropped it. Once you assemble the pieces and radio for help, a van appears in the woods, and everyone still alive needs to hightail it to the van in order to avoid becoming zombie chow. Easy, right?
Well, like I said, it depends on how many players there are. With five or six, it’s not that hard. With two or three players… Good luck, unless you’re each using more than one character. You see, even though with fewer players there are fewer zombies coming out, you still have to take into account that with more players you get more overall actions before an event happens and the more area you can cover in a turn. It makes a much bigger difference than I first thought it would. That’s not to say it ruins the game or anything. Even with six players, you can’t be sloppy or the zombies will eat you. (Though since you turn into a zombie with cool abilities and get to try and eat the other players if you do get eaten, maybe that’s not a bad thing?) But with proper planning it’s kind of hard to lose with six players. But hey, at the same time, it makes it easy to teach the game to larger groups of beginners, since you probably don’t have to worry about a TPK.
The game does have plenty of good stuff going for it. For example, once all of the cabin cards have been drawn, that’s it. The cabin is empty of useful items, so you’d better hurry and assemble that radio. This effectively puts the game on a timer, but it’s a timer you control. If that makes any sense. It keeps the game just tense enough. Many of the cabin cards are pretty good, especially the firearms, but since they run out pretty quickly, especially when you have more players, you’ve got to use them wisely. At first they help a lot to keep the number of zombies low. But as the guns start running out of ammo, you see more and more zombies appearing and staying on the board. I found that pretty cool. It made the game feel like it was building like a crescendo until there were just too many zombies to realistically fight without a lot of luck. In the 5- and 6-player games I played, running out of zombies in the bag was not uncommon, because every last zombie token was already on the table. Did I forget to mention that when the bag runs out you just put the killed zombies back into the bag? So even if you killed a few, more likely than not they’d just be back on the table at the end of the turn. You know what? I didn’t mind at all. It was kinda fun being so outnumbered, because it meant it was that much more imperative we outsmart the zombies.
The game doesn’t run very long. All three survivors and their radio pieces will appear by the first time you get through the bag of zombies. Add that to the limited amount of cabin cards, and the game is designed to be pretty fast. If you have a lot of inexperienced players it can take a while. My first six player game took around of three hours, but that was with five complete newbies. Once you’ve got some experienced people, it’s usually not much longer than one hour, if that.
Bottom Line: I liked this game, and had a lot of fun playing. While I have a couple issues with the components, they’re annoyances more than anything. The game itself is relatively fast and pretty fun with how the horde grows, adding to the sense of desperation you get. Just make sure you find the right size group for playing this game. If you want a challenge, go with fewer players. If you just want some quick, easy fun, then grab five friends and start breaking out the Evil Dead references.
Please note: This game technically isn’t out yet. While a limited run has been shipped, those were pre-orders, and that first shipment wasn’t enough to cover everything. It’s theoretically possible that a store in your area has a copy, I’ve seen people online claim to have seen them in the wild, but I wouldn’t count on it. (If you do find one, grab it fast!) Otherwise, Fireside games is aiming for a Thanksgiving release, but the date isn’t set in stone. Fireside’s website is probably the best place to look for updates about the wider release.
