This week, I backed the Kickstarter campaign for the game Eaten by Zombies! from Max Holliday, and brought to the world by Mayday Games. This game appealed to me the moment I started reading through the info. For starters, well...it's zombies. I love zombie games. I don't give a crap that zombies have over-saturated just about every market they have infected. In fact, that's pretty damn meta, if you ask me! From what I have seen so far, it has some high quality production too. Good linen stock cards, fun and colorful art, good use of icons (road signs = awesome), and the ammo can box is just pure win. Sure, it's an exercise in shelf-marketing, but it seems to be a hell of a lot more user friendly than some other recent examples. (I'm looking at you, Quarriors!) This morning I realized exactly what the real hook was. This game does several things that I wanted to explore myself. In an earlier development journal, I discussed turning "losing" players into a collective force against the remaining ones, and Eaten by Zombies! does just that. If ever a survivor draws a full hand of six zombie cards from their draw deck, all survivors at the table go insane and the game is considered a zombie win. Players become zombies by losing their entire deck due to the attrition caused by losing fights with, or fleeing from, the growing zombie hoard. Also, the tension in the game is cranked up bit by bit as the hoard grows, and it seems that it isn't a matter of if a survivor will die, but when.
Both of these concepts I previously worked into a prototype zombie board-game of my own, which is untitled and is currently serving a simple study in these ideas. Furthermore, a deck-building game that not only pits you against the other players, but also against a global threat which can can destroy ALL players I have been tinkering with in the latest iterations of a cult themed game.
It is the (hopefully) successful combination of these elements that has me really excited about the release of this game.
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