Publisher: Dan Verssen Games

Release Date: January 2013

MSRP: $39.99

Number of Players: 1 to 8

Playing Time: 30 to 90 minutes

Age Rating: 12 and up

Product #: DV1-027

ICv2 Rating: 3 Stars out of 5

 

It seems that the zombie is the zeitgeist of our age.  Zombies in the movies.  Zombies in comics.  Zombies on television.  Even Zombies at the CDC and zombie-themed athletic events.  The walking dead have some unholy fascination to America today.  And perhaps the only thing more frightening than a horde of brain-hungry zombies is the horde of zombie-themed games

 

Dan Verssen Games has stepped into that over-crowded field with its quite admirable entry:  Rise of the Zombies!  This frustrating and way-too-hard-to-win cooperative game captures the hopeless and overwhelming feel of a good zombie movie, and though you are quite likely to wind up as zombie lunch, it manages to be interesting and fun.

 

Summary:  The players assume the roles of various zombie-survival-movie stereotypes—the boy scout, the biker, the obligatory cheerleader—trying desperately to cross a zombie-infested cityscape and reach the last escape helicopter in time.  Along the way, players find and wield a variety of weapons, fight uncountable numbers of zombies, and try to avoid being lunch.  Combat is quick and easy, though very luck-dependent and extremely deadly.  Winning or losing is just as simple: if you're on the helicopter when it leaves, you win.  Otherwise, you lose.

 

Originality:  There really isn't much in Rise of the Zombies! that can be described as original.  The theme has inspired dozens of games, the combat mechanics are a simple "roll the die and check the chart."  Inflict enough hits and the zombie dies, suffer enough hits and your character dies.  However, DVG did introduce one nifty feature:  the game comes with a digital timer.  When the game starts, you set the timer.  When the timer runs out, the helicopter leaves.  This clever system creates a lot of tension in the game, and forces players to try to play as quickly as they can.  As an added bonus, the shortage of time discourages the common problem of most cooperative games:  other players telling you how you’re "supposed" to play.

 

Presentation:  The cover art on the box is creepy and eerie, and for me at least draws you in and makes you want to see what's going on.  Sadly, it appears that DVG only contracted that one piece of color art:  It appears on the rulebook cover and the card backs also, but it’s the only color art in the game.  Everything else is simple line art "sketches" of the characters, zombies, and actions of the game.  You spend a lot of the game looking at the cards, so some nice color art on the cards would have been a definite plus.

 

Quality:  Component quality also was a big disappointment for me.  The cards are thick and stiff and hard to shuffle.  Though you don't shuffle a lot in this game, you will likely have to shuffle at least a couple times during a typical game.  Since the deck itself is huge (well over 100 cards), struggling to shuffle them without bending them is annoying.  The game tokens and character stand-ups are printed on a thin cardboard and aren't much thicker than the playing cards.  The corners of my tokens quickly curled even after a few plays.  I would much rather have thick, quality tokens and plastic figures for the characters.  The rulebook is quite nice, though, with glossy pages, complete rules text, and plenty of well-illustrated examples.  Sadly, they are not well-organized when it’s time to find the answer to a rules question.  This can be a problem with a timed game, to say the least…

 

Marketability:  DVG has taken on a tall order with Rise of the Zombies!  It enters a very crowded field, with little in the way of presentation to make it stand head and rotten-shoulders above all the other zombie games.  Which is unfortunate.  Because it really does evoke the hopeless feeling of the classic zombie films in a much better way than any of the other zombie games that I have played (which is more than a few).  Hopefully, word of mouth will convince more people to give the game a shot.

 

Overall:  Rise of the Zombies! is an excellent addition to both the zombie and the cooperative game genres.  It is much harder to win than most co-op games, and captures the essence of the theme better than most zombie games.  It is, however, frustrating.  The first time you sit down, you're very likely to lose.  Probably the second and third time, too.  The game is very luck-dependent, and a bad card draw or die roll early can literally doom the entire party from the start.  My advice for first-time players:  ignore the timer.  Yes, it's a cool addition to the game, and it really does build the tension that a good zombie game needs.  But trying to learn the not-always intuitive mechanics quickly while trying to rush through your turns is not a great way to learn a new game.  So, set it up.  Play it without the timer.  And when your entire party is wiped out by a horde of walking corpses you can set it all up again and then play it for real with the timer.

 

Though flawed by below-average component quality, Rise of the Zombies! is a very good game that evokes its theme perfectly and offers fantastic dramatic tension.  It is a game that should appeal to fans of both zombies and cooperative games.  So, keep a loaded shotgun near the door and an extra pack of beef jerky handy.  You never know when the zombie apocalypse is going to erupt.  Until then, you can play Rise of the Zombies! for practice.  Good luck!

 

I give this game 3 out of 5.

--William Niebling