Zombie Town & Dead of Night

Just when I thought it was safe to say: "No more board games for me" which is a flat out lie...Along comes yet another zombie themed game from the creators of Zombies!!!- this time called Zombie Town.


Up to four players control neighbors fighting off a zombie invasion from the center of their culdesac, which happens to be a cementary. Each player protects their home from the lurching zombies and are allowed to kill other players- to get more ammo, health, etc. Here's the town gameboard and cards:



Kinda neat. I own the original Zombies!!! game and was angry for not waiting until the expansion had come out. Better art being the only real difference. Oh well. With this game you also get 100 zombies- if I get this game, I'll own 330 little plastic zombies. 330. Yow. Here's a typical set-up of the game...


My thoughts....Not sure about it. I've been reading reviews on boargamegeek.com and it's a mixed bag-mostly negative. Y'see, Twilight Creations (the only publisher to continually create zombie-related games, bless 'em) make rules clear enough for Mr. Magoo to follow.

The pieces are there to make a great game- the board/cards, the concept, and the...sigh...rules, but you have to put it all together. In most cases- re-write the rules yourself to make sense. I've done this for my Zombies!!! game and it's now playable. But you shouldn't have to.

As for the set-up picture above, it looks like it would be hard to keep track of all those different card piles with four players. Zombies!!! suffered the same problem initially, so I created a larger card to keep track of all the little trinkets. Might have to build a card stand or something...hmm.

There was also another game a bgg'er (boardgamegeeker) mentioned called Dead of Night. It's a free download available at http://www.freehomepages.com/schmidtlapp/page1.html

The game is similar to the other zombie games, but plays out on a Heroclix-like map. Everything is printed out by you- the maps, cards, rules, etc. but has been given high praises as "the best zombie themed game" out there. I'll have to look more into it, but I'm torn between both at the moment. Here' s a pic of some of the elements from Dead of Night:



Also very neat. But much more expensive (the $40-$50 range once said and done). Maybe I could use my map from Horrorclix? Although, I should probably finish my custom Ghostbusters game before too long...

All images from boardgamegeek.com. I'd take the pics myself, but I don't own the games yet.