Game Review: Zombie Dice

As gory as this game gets!

Zombie Dice is a nicely themed "press your luck" game where you play a zombie trying to eat thirteen brains before any of the other zombie players do.

Each turn the player takes three random dice out of the cup (the potential victims) and rolls them. Rolling a brain means the player gets to keep that particular die and eat their brains. Rolling a shotgun blast has to be kept as well because the zombie took some damage. Rolling footsteps means the victim escapes. If the player now has three shotgun blasts, he is killed for that round and scores nothing. If not, the player can choose to stop and score one point for each brain rolled. This should be tracked on paper because you can't rely on a zombie's memory. If the player decides to keep rolling, he puts any footsteps back in his hand and he has to draw more dice from the cup until he has three to roll. Then he goes through the whole process again.

After the player stops or is stopped, the next player plays, and so on until each player has a turn. Once a player has a total of thirteen brains, the rest of the players finish the round and try to equal or surpass him. Ties go on to a tie-breaker round.

Game components with additions.

Not all the thirteen dice are equal, just as all potential victims are not equal. Green dice are the easiest to win with since they have more brains. Yellow dice are medium difficult. Red dice have only one brain symbol and lots of shotguns, so they are the toughest to win. Paradoxically, the victims with more brains are more likely to be eaten, though the critical brain in this game is the player's brain. Knowing when to stop and collect points depends on luck, what dice are still in the cup, and how the other zombie players are faring. Some thinking goes into playing but the game ultimately comes down to luck.

The game is a fun way to kill some time. It goes quickly (unless everyone feels exceptionally lucky and really isn't). The rules are easy to learn and play is simplicity itself. For parents, the goriest thing in the game is the box it comes in, which isn't too bad by most standards. The only thing we did add to the game was a golf pencil and a small pad of sticky notes for scoring. They easily fit inside the box and guarantee that if you take the game on the road, you'll still be able to keep score.

I bought this at my favorite comic book store, where they charged $13.13 for the game. How awesome is that! Support your local game shop because where are you going to get fun things to do when civilization collapses after the zombie apocalypse?