Review: Zombies!!!

"When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth."- George A. Romero

When all seems lost and its just you and a massive mob of zombies then you must be playing the classic tile laying game Zombies!!! from Twilight Creations. This game has been going strong for 20 years! There are more than 15 expansions for the game and tons of accessories and spin offs including Humans!!! where the tables are flipped and you are the mindless brain eaters. This game makes a perfect addition to that Halloween themed game night you are planning.

For this review I am using my 2nd edition version of the game Twilight Creations has released a third edition of Zombies!!!. This game is a tile laying crawler that has the heroes (players) looking for the way out of town and in this game that's the helicopter at the helipad.

This game is fairly easy to play but at times its hard to win. The first player to get to the center space on the helipad an kill any zombies there escapes and wins. The alternate win condition is to collect 25 dead zombies. Every player turn consists of drawing a tile placing it connecting to another tile, filling it with the proper amount of zombies, bullets and heart tokens then fighting and moving happens. There are also action cards that can be played during your turn to enhance attack defense and manipulate the conditions in the game.

Zombies!!! comes with a very large bag of zombie minis

In the box Zombies!! comes with a very large bag of zombie minis and 6 shotgun guys for the players, a whole mess of bullet and life counters, a deck of cards, stack of tiles, dice and the rules of course. All the tiles in the game have 1, 2, 3 or 4 entrances into the tile and you have to place it in a spot that doesn't block any entrances already played or on the tile you are playing. There are named tiles and unnamed. The named tiles get bullet and life counters along with the zombies. The regular town tiles get just zombies (based on the number of entrances of the tile). Some event cards are tied to the named spaces and some of them have more tokens than others so there is some strategy in how you place the tiles. don't forget its a race to the helipad or 25.

So you want to kill the zombies? Well all you have to do is roll a 4, 5 or 6 on a six sided die when your in the same space as a zombie (they can only be one per space). There are items in the deck that can lower that number for you and event cards that can raise it to. If you miss and you don't have any cards to help you you have to spend a life token or one bullet token for every number you missed by. For example if you rolled a 2 you could spend 2 bullet tokens to get the 4 you need or if you don't have enough you can spend a life token and roll again. Just don't run out of those life tokens or your starting over at the town square without any dead zombies in your collection.

The rules are light and the action is non stop in this zombie thriller.

I like breaking this game out around Halloween. Its got that classic zombie movie feel to it with the huge hordes of zombies closing in on a small group of survivors the only twist is we are all out for ourselves. The rules are light and the action is non stop in this zombie thriller.

Designed by: Todd Breitenstein

Players: 2-6

Published by: Twilight Creations, Inc.

Year Published: 2001

Recommended Ages: 12+

Time to Play: 60 minutes