Game Review: The Walking Dead: Surrounded by Button Shy Games

The Walking Dead: Surrounded designed by Jason Tagmire and published by Button Shy Games

The publisher Button Shy Games is famous for its unique design model. All the games are eighteen cards with an instruction booklet and a small wallet. Some games require other materials provided by the player (like tokens or something to write notes or scores on) but typically the whole game is just the small deck of cards. Occasional expansions add more cards or substitute some cards. In The Walking Dead: Surrounded, players build a tableau of eighteen cards alternating locations and character cards, hoping to set up many locations with more humans than zombies adjacent. 

The cards are two-sided with the fronts showing locations and the backs four different characters on each edge.

Sample locations

Some locations have a special rule at the bottom, a person or a walker already there, and/or an end-game scoring symbol (a number or an item in the top right corner). 

The character cards are a mixture of walkers and humans, with the humans divided into leaders (with a star next to their picture) and survivors (with a head and shoulders next to their picture). Some humans have special abilities which will be described below.

Sample characters

To start the game, the cards are shuffled location-side up. The first location is put on the table and the second card is flipped to the character side. One of the zombie sides must be placed next to the location. The game then proceeds with playing cards from the deck, building a checkboard pattern of alternating location and character cards. The player has two choices with the next card on the deck.

First, the top deck card can be played to Explore, using the location and putting it next to one of the characters already in play. After the location is played the next card is flipped and a zombie-side of the card must be placed next to this new location. In some cases, that may not be possible (the location has two or one open sides available). Then the player is free to place the card next to some other location without having to match a zombie to any location. 

The second choice is to flip the top deck card and play it to Occupy an open location. The card can go to any legal spot (i.e. a location with an open side) with no restriction on placing a zombie next to a place. If the card has a Walker on the location side, then it can only be played as an Explore.

Some humans have an Ability, so when they are played to a new location (through either the Occupy action or the zombie-spawn after the Explore action) the special power may be used. Move lets the player move a card at the location to another side (if available). Look lets the player examine both sides of the top or bottom card of the deck. Burn lets the player take any card from the tableau and put it on the top or bottom of the draw deck. The only restriction on Burn is that the map has to remain contiguous, i.e. no cards only adjacent diagonally to other cards.

The game ends when the deck runs out of cards. Then the score is totaled. At each location, subtract the number of zombies from the number of people. If the number is negative, that's a negative score and the location is overrun (some locations have penalties for being overrun--additional negative points!). If there are an equal number of people and zombies, the location is empty. If there are more people, the player scores one point for each survivor. Leaders score a little differently. If there is more than one leader, they eliminate each other. Any leader left scores one point and additional points for any other survivors still at the location. The player can strategically use the Walkers to take out an extra leader or two if necessary. Any location that is surrounded by cards scores if it has a symbol on it (a number or an item). 

A high-scoring final situation

The game says one to four players play cooperatively, but this is basically a solo game because there is only one goal and people would just group-think the play (or an alpha player might take over). Players don't have individual hands, they just play off the top of the deck.

The rules come with special scenarios that add achievements in order to win. For example, Fuel Up requires locations with gas cans to be surrounded in order to win. Each scenario has levels. For Fuel Up, Standard level requires two gas-can locations to be surrounded; hard level requires the two locations not to be overrun (i.e., more humans than zombies); expert level requires the two locations to also have a leader and at least one survivor. Other scenarios involve other resources or limit the number of special actions or require specific leader/follower configurations. My favorite scenario is Betrayer, where the player works against humanity and tries to make a very low score--less than -10 for standard, -15 for hard, or -20 for expert!

The game creates a nice puzzle with a bunch of variations. After I mastered the basic game, I had fun trying to accomplish the various scenarios. The game involves a small amount of "luck of the draw" which can be mitigated by using the abilities to recover or move needed cards. It's similar in feel to Sprawlopolis but a little easier.

The cards use art from the comic books (which I have read), so it's nice for fans to see familiar faces and locations (even when I don't quite remember everyone). The theme is well suited to the game, trying to manage a very difficult situation.

An expansion, Under Siege, adds six new cards with new abilities and bonuses. The mercenary ability lets that character kill all Walkers at the location but doesn't count as a survivor or leader. A new bonus item, Dynamite, is added and must be surrounded or else the player loses a point at the end of the game (surrounding it gains a point, so a two-point swing is involved). The expansion adds some more challenge and variety to an already interesting game.

Recommended, highly for fans of The Walking Dead.

The game and expansion is available from the publisher's web store.