Review: Night of the Living Dead: Zombicide

I have got a special treat for you today. I got this gem of a game for my birthday from my wife Mary late last year. She saw me drooling over it every time we walked past the game store. Full disclosure I have not played Zombicide before (i know I know) this gem arrived. So lets take a look at 2020's Night of the Living Dead (a Zombicide Game) by CMON games.

1968 brought us the movie Night of the Living Dead, George Romero's break out undead movie. 2012 the zombiecide game system was first published. Finally we have the two in the same box providing an immersive narrative experience in a single box. Night of the living dead is a game for 1-6 people and a scenario should take you about an hour to play. There are 10 scenarios in the box and there is a bonus scenario on CMON's website.

You open the box and there is so much to see! The game includes 12 survivor minis. Or if your wife found you the kickstarter edition you get 8 more survivor minis. Thanks Mary!! There are also 54 Ghouls in the box comprised of Walkers, Breakers, Fatties and Relatives. There are six double sided map boards and all the dashboards, decks and accessories also in the box. Basically lift with you legs with this game.

Night of the Living dead is a cooperative game for 1-6 players. In this case you will divide up the six main characters from the movie to the amount of people playing I started with playing solo my first time and there was a lot to track. This game is defiantly more fun with more folks so grab some friends.

When I was setting up scenario 1 I felt like Oprah "you get a table leg and you get a table leg".

This game has a very cool system for tracking experience within the scenario. As you preform certain tasks or kill ghouls you move up your XP tracker and as you move up you gain new skills. The characters can wield up to two weapons to kill the ghouls and 3 card slots in their backpack. Everything is very detailed and themed to the movie. When I was setting up scenario 1 I felt like Oprah "you get a table leg and you get a table leg".

The scenarios in the game walk you through the movie hitting all of the important scenes starting with Barbra and Ben arriving at the farm house with the others all hiding upstairs. The game really does a good job of immersing you into the movie. The game does kind of stray from the movie when it starts to let the Zombicide aspects in. The charterers in the game all have two sides there is a normal film side and a Zombicide mode side. When you flip over to Zombicide mode there are more skills to choose from. Helen with Samurai swords sure why not. This is a temporary change depending on the scenario and other conditions. This dose not really change too much of the immersion for me its just slightly odd that Barbra becomes a little more skilled but only sometimes and not when a relative of hers shows up in ghoul form.

But if you work together you stand a decent chance of surviving this ghoulish nightmare.

As you progress trough the game and find more weapons and items you can start combining thing for example you can combine a table leg and flammable liquid to make a torch! You can even do things like board up the windows to make it seem safer for you and your friends. There are different types of ghouls that spawn during the game. The breakers can start breaking those temporary barriers that you put up and the relatives can just pop up when you least expect it. Sometimes the ghouls can start overwhelming you. But if you work together you stand a decent chance of surviving this ghoulish nightmare.

All in all This was a fun game and goes pretty fast once you get the game all set up. There are a lot of table leg shaped pegs to put in all 6 charterers so it takes a second to get it setup. This would be a great centerpiece to a zombie themed game night. Night of the Living Dead has quality minis and pieces in the box and the price tag is still fairly reasonable for a game of this depth.

Designed by: Raphaël Guiton, Jean-Baptiste Lullien, Nicolas Raoult

Players: 1-6

Published by: CMON Limited

Year Published: 2020

Recommended Ages: 14+

Time to Play: 60 minutes