This is a series of posts where I play 100 boardgames.
Game: Zombicide: 2nd Edition
Designer: Raphaël Guiton, Jean-Baptiste Lullien & Nicolas Raoult
Year: 2021
Country: France
Publisher: CMON
The first Zombicide game I’ve played was Undead or Alive, but I wanted to try out the base game as well just to get a feel for how it works in its original form. Zombicide’s concept is extremely clear from zombie movies: You’re a hardy bunch of survivors trying to stay alive in the midst of the zombie hordes, searching for weapons, food and other items while keeping ahead of the mindless enemy.
We played two of the scenarios included in the game, the tutorial and the first proper one. The game’s map is built out of square pieces fit together according to the map of each scenario. The map is broken down into zones which are used to measure movement, weapon ranges, line of sight and whether a zombie is near or far from your character. A shotgun might have a range of 0-1, meaning that you can shoot into your own and adjacent zones.
The introductory scenario is played on just two map pieces, giving it a simple, claustrophobic feel. The first proper scenario featured a big map of all nine board pieces, displaying a few blocks of a ruined city. This is when the game really came alive, as the bigger area allowed for more interesting tactics and made the world feel more substantial.
The big city map with its zebra crossings and square block in the middle reminded us of playmats for toy cars we’d had as children, or the city line of Lego toys. A definite plus!
The humor and general aesthetic of Zombicide: 2nd Edition has a distinct vibe to it reminiscent of the first decade of the 2000s. Big zombies are called Fatties. There’s a Hobomination. The characters are trashy, crass and edgy caricatures of stock figures from comics and tv.
As each player’s character kills zombies and takes objectives on the map, they gain experience. It grants access to more abilities but also eventually increases the danger posed by the zombies. The characters are stronger and the hordes are bigger in a cycle of escalation that may result in huge piles of zombie minis crammed into one of the map’s zones.
That’s when you break out the Molotov cocktail and wipe out all of them in one go.
Zombicide’s great strength lies in how the core mechanism replicates the dramatic arc of a zombie story. At first, you’re managing with just one or two zombies, but soon the threat escalates and you have to run for your life. The design aesthetic is rickety and chaotic so that if you do something dumb with your first moves, the game is going to be very short, but there’s a certain thematic sense to how it works.