City Of Zombies

There was a time when zombies were everywhere. I guess with the whole horde thing they have going on that would be beneficial for them, but it did seem that you couldn’t shamble anywhere without running into zombies. Multiple films, video games, art work, literature, the list goes on and on. Zombies are also no stranger to board games featuring in such games as Zombicide, Last Night On Earth and Dead Of Winter.



City Of Zombies continues the board game trend of invading zombies and is brought to us by designer Matthew Tidbury. The aim of City Of Zombies is to escape from the encroaching mass of grotesque monstrosities, but it isn’t as straight forward as “bash with weapon” like in a video game, this is tabletop town baby!

The idea behind City Of Zombies is termed “stealth learning”, what this means is the gameplay is engaging enough that the players don’t always realise they are learning as they play.

The main mechanic of City Of Zombies is dice rolling. Where some games would use dice rolling just as a way to traverse the board and randomise spacial movement, City Of Zombies actually utilises the numbers in conjunction with your maths ability. The whole game is about using the numbers shown on the dice and maths - be that multiplication, division, addition, subtraction or whatever else you can think of in the realm of maths - to equal the numbers shown on the zombie. Depending on what difficulty you want and ability of player’s you’re playing with, all of the dice must be used or that player skips their turn, but with newer/younger players you can modify this rule. It’s actually quite a neat idea and can become challenging with a great number of zombies making their way towards your yummy brain.

City Of Zombies comes with an array of different cards each survive different purposes.

The cards included in the game are:



Survivors - these are cards that will be in your barricaded zone that the players need to protect, if you lose all of your survivors, you lose the game.



Zombies - zombie cards will have unique numbers in the bottom right corner that you need to achieve by using the dice, if a zombie ever gets to your barricade you lose an amount of Survivors which is indicated in the top left corner of the zombie.

 These are the main two cards you need to focus on during a game of City Of Zombies, other cards will show up when replenishing the game board including:
Events - event cards can both help and hinder you.
Heroes - heroes come with a unique ability that can help you during the game. There are also flip heroes that you will need to save before they turn into a zombie.
Items - item cards can be used to get an advantage and can be used by any player as you are working as a team.

The set up of the game may seem like there’s a lot going on but bear with me. First off you flip over cards from the zombie deck to fill the top row of the board, then deal out survivor cards which will be placed behind the barricade. There is a plane that will be placed along the side of the board, the plane will dictate the number of rounds - 5,10 or 15 - and can be altered from game to game to modify the difficulty. At the beginning of each round you enact any event cards that may have been dealt out from the zombie deck and then discard them. During each round players will roll the dice and try to get rid of any zombies on the board before more amass and they start to move closer to the barricade. If zombies ever get to your barricade they will eat a number of survivors as dictated on the zombie card. The plane will move closer each round and once it hits the runway you and any remaining survivors escape and you win.

City Of Zombies was designed to help the designer’s daughter with maths and it must have worked as it proudly wears the badge of a National Numeracy recommended game. It has also been used in schools as a way to help children improve their maths ability and interact with each other to much success.

Ultimately, City Of Zombies is a very well designed game that, even though it may be designed for a younger audience, is still challenging for an older audience. It’s playable from 1-6 but really there isn’t any restriction of the number of players, you can have as many playing at one time as each player is using the same dice. Difficulty wise there is a lot you can tweak to tailor the game for any player’s ability including the level of zombies being used, what heroes come up and, as I said earlier, how strict the use of dice is (for younger players you can relax the rule that all dice must be used). City Of Zombies encourages players to help each other and I think achieves that nicely as players may not always be confident in their maths ability which is why it’s been so effective in school, helping children develop multiple skills at the same time with such ease.

Usually a game lasts about half an hour to an hour, depending on the amount of players/difficulty level etc, so City Of Zombies fits nicely into an evening of gaming without taking up to much time. As coop games go, City Of Zombies provides a well designed and substantial challenge. You all need to work together as that’s the essence of a zombie apocalypse, as I’ve found out a few times a solo game isn’t as easy as first looked. You and any of your scrappy survivalist friends will have a great time with City Of Zombies, with all the replayability potential along with a stand-alone expansion - Times Square, which adds more special zombies and hero cards along with a D12 die to help with the greater numbered zombies - it offers a brilliant varying experience playthrough after playthrough.

 

Check out City Of Zombies down at your local game store, I’m sure you’ll be hooked straight away but as always, remember to keep coming back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.