Zombie Survival Infection

Reviewed and is available to read. Very fun game!

I played this twice at BGG Con 2023. Both games came down to the wire. The mechanics make sense, the presentation is great, the symbols were straightforward. I had nothing to add to this in terms of what it needed. It was an instant purchase for 3 people at the table.

A competitive game of zombie survival. Each player has their own camp of survivors that grows and shrinks during the game. The goal is to have the last camp with some survivors. Or once your camp is wiped out, you become a zombie and your goal is to wipe out the last couple surviving camps simultaneously so there is no survivor winner. On your turn you roll a base die and possibly a survival or infection die if one is in front of you. The dice aren't normal faces. They are low numbers and even have a blank side. But as you collect a hide out and characters, you will adjust the dice totals up or down, and the survival and infection die also have a doubling side, so you could roll quite a large total (add any adjustments before doubling). At the start of the game, you are rolling for survival on your turn. A positive survival number pulls that value in survivor tokens from the center of the table to your camp. A negative survival number pushes them from your camp to the center (character cards also count as survivors after you run out of survivor tokens). Once your camp becomes infected, you roll infection instead of survival. It works nearly the same way as survival, but a positive roll means you flip that value in survivors to the zombie side and return them to the center and a negative roll means you pull that value in survivor tokens from the center of the table to your camp. After you roll the dice, draw up to a total of 6 cards (it is possible to go above 6 cards from effects, but it's rare). If you draw the one event card, Hidden Bite, your camp becomes infected and bring the infection die into play; infected players never take receive the survival die. After drawing cards (as long as you didn't draw the event), then you can either play a card, discard 2 cards, trade with another player, or pass your action. Some cards are reaction cards which can be played in response to action or reaction cards. Just follow the effects on the cards. Some are character cards with effects. Some are hideouts that could replace your existing hideout for a better effect. Most cards are action cards. Just follow the effect on the cards. If something mentions negative survivors, it means flip them to their zombie side and return them to the center. There's a small glossary in the back of the rules, and it's not complicated. At the end of your turn pass the base die to the next player and choose any player to give the survival or infection die if you have it. If they aren't yet infected when they receive the infection die, they become infected. You play until there is no more than one camp with survivors. And that's basically it. The rules are not complicated. But the game falls flat for me. I'm not particularly into zombie themes to begin with. But this just feels very take that without reason. You want to grow your camp of survivors, but it's just a numbers game. It's all about rolling well and drawing good cards. You don't build anything or set traps. All you can do to scavenge is discard 2 cards as an action so you draw up more the next turn. There's not much incentive for players to trade. And it's not much like you are fighting off zombies. Zombies can never enter your camp except for the Hidden Bite event and the passing of the infection die causing the camp to become infected, and you can't prevent those so every camp should become infected. Some reactions will lessen how many survivors die, and some reactions can save a character or hideout, but I never felt like I was surviving in a zombie apocalypse. It's just felt like rolling dice and playing random cards. The rotoscoped art style is not for me, but isn't bad. But none of the scenes on the card were all that spectacular either. Just what you would see in any zombie movie. And card effects weren't inspiring either. A few cards just affect a couple cards with a certain name. Handling survivors with tokens has some pros and cons. It is thematic to see the number of survivor tokens that turn over to their zombie side, forming a horde in the center of the table. And by using tokens, it does limit how many survivors are available to bring into camps. But it is a high limit and the game goes on for longer than it probably should for how much luck there is. The tokens are mostly values of ones and fives. There were very few tens. You will have to make change as you gain and lose survivors. It could have been handled more simply with resource tracks, but it is more thematic to see them. So maybe they should have just been single tokens without values, which shorten the game and drop the need for change. It felt weird that as survivors we were trying to kill off the other camps. It also felt weird that turned zombie players wanted to try and keep the surviving camps even rather than just overwhelm them, since the zombies only win if the remaining surviving players die at the same time. So this game doesn't give me the kind of zombie story I'd look for in a game, and it just feels very random and uninteresting. But I can't fault the rules. The game is simple enough.

I wonder if I missed a rule about putting people into infection most much more often or sooner, but as played the game dragged. The early game had neat politics, balancing who can help you vs who is getting too strong, but the mid-game dragged on. Most turns involve playing a single card that has very small effect on the game. When the city runs out, the game finally starts to stumble towards ending.

The art is great.

KS a copy because of the art. Opened it up at a local con, and at first we screwed up rules(we had both survival and infection dice out at beginning) but read a bit more and enjoyed the correct way to play much more. I would suggest improving rulebook just a tad, by moving stuff around.