There was a time when Zombies!!! really was the only choice of zombie board game on the market. There was a Dawn of the Dead board game released in the 70’s, but it is very difficult to get hold of. Zombies!!! is a really simple game and very easy to teach to casual gamers, with its theme you can easily get non-gamers to play it, so long as they are into zombies of course.

It comes with a pile of square map tiles with roads on them, straights, corners and junctions that you build the game board with. There is also a deck of event cards, dice, loads of tokens, some plastic ‘shotgun guys’ and a ton of plastic zombie miniatures. There is high quality artwork throughout that is grainy and very thematic, with plenty of allusions to the genre in the event cards.

You start the game with the shotgun guys on the Town Square tile in the middle of the table, and put the Helicopter tile at the bottom of the deck of map tiles. You build the board as you go along, so when it is your turn you draw a tile that has a road on it, and sometimes a building. You place the tile where you want it, so long as the roads are adjacent, and then you put a bunch of zombies on the tile.

The aim of the game is to kill 25 zombies or escape on the helicopter, but every time you die you lose half the zombies you killed, and the helicopter is at the bottom of the deck. Your shotgun guy moves 1D6 spaces per turn, and can move up to the full amount rolled so long as he kills any zombies that are in the way. It can be frustrating though if you roll a series of 1’s and 2’s and cannot get anywhere.

When you fight a zombie you roll 1 die, if you score a 4, 5 or 6 it is killed. If you score a 1, 2 or 3 you are wounded. You start with five wounds, and you lose them quite quickly, fortunately you can pick up wounds from some of the buildings, so long as you can kill the zombies in them. You also start with 3 bullet tokens, that you can discard to gain +1 on a die roll, you can also find more bullets in buildings.

There is also a deck of event cards with Zombies!!!. The players cannot attack each other directly, but the cards allow you to make your movement or zombie killing easier or interfere with other player’s turns. This is largely where the entertainment comes into Zombies!!! because without the cards it could be a rather dull roll and move game with lots of fighting in it.

There are cards that can cause a player to lose a turn like ‘Hysterical Paralysis’, or become surrounded by zombies like ‘Zombie Master’ and so on. It often happens that several cards are dumped on one player over the course of several player’s turns, so that he goes from a position of strength to weakness. There is lots of entertainment to be had from playing the cards, as you have an excuse to insult/goad/patronise your friends when you do so.

The drawback that Zombies!!! has is that there is very little strategy, and it is fairly repetitive. With its playing time it can sometimes outlive its welcome, as two hours of roll/move/fight can be a bit of a grind. The advantage of Zombies is that it requires little or no thought, and a healthy sense of humour. It isn’t the best zombie holocaust board game, but it is one of the simplest and most approachable.

There are lots of expansions for Zombies!!! including additional map tiles and event cards that are themed to different elements of the zombie genre like the high school or the military base. They improve the game play slightly, but are mostly increasing replay ability by varying the scenery of the game. They also introduce zombie dogs and super soldier zombies, although most of the miniatures can be bought separately. 

The Twilight Creations website has lots of links to zombie themed sites, and there are lots of fan designed rules for Zombies!!! where the basic game is expanded. They add missions and additional environmental effects on the game and solo play rules. In principle though you can easily solo play just by controlling all six shotgun guys just to see which one reaches the helicopter.

These fan rules are what makes Zombies!!! a much better game in that it is very easily converted to make it more strategic and a little bit less mindless. They can also shorten the playing time which is great, because as a 60 minute game Zombies!!! would be perfect. If you deal the helicopter into the map tile deck it gives you a random end game, which is the simplest way to vary the format.

Zombies!!! is a very good entry level game for non-gamers. It has excellent and often funny artwork and components, and makes for a very good party game or pick up game as it is easy to set up so long as you have plenty of room for the map tiles. With the expansions you can create a mammoth city of map tiles and a truly epic game played across several hours if you have the guts for it.