Eaten by Zombies - A Review.

Kickstarter.com has been making waves in board game development lately. Its no-risk preorder model allows indie designers and larger publishers alike to take more risks when releasing games. When a designer has a project that he wants to fund, but doesn’t have the money up front to print the game, or fears that the game may not have a large enough audience, he can pitch his project on kickstarter.com.  Potential buyers can “invest” in this idea by pledging money to the project, and in return will receive a copy of the game when it is printed. Most kickstarter projects offer some nifty goodies that are exclusive to the kickstarter campaign.  If the project does not earn enough money to fund it, the investors are not obligated to pay anything. This is great for both the game publishers, and the consumers; the publishers don’t end up with a bunch of unsold stock in their warehouses, and the consumer doesn’t lose money if a game isn’t printed.

One of the many publishers to begin embracing kickstarter as a means of offering game preorders is Mayday Games. Until now, Mayday Games has mostly been known for manufacturing card sleeves for hobby and euro games, but Mayday is entering the game publishing business with a bang this quarter with no fewer than three kickstarter projects, all of which are either already funded, or well on target to be funded. One of these titles is an interesting Zombie themed deck building game designed by Max Holliday, called Eaten By Zombies, of which I was fortunate enough to play an advanced copy.

In Eaten by Zombies, players work to defeat a zombie horde, by fighting, fleeing, and scavenging for items. Notice I didn’t say the players are working together to defeat the zombie horde; the game may seem to be somewhat cooperative at first glance, and there are ways to achieve a cooperative victory, but the easiest, and most prevalent way of winning involves being the last player alive. In order to stay alive, sometimes friendships have to be sacrificed. Eaten by Zombies turns the act of throwing other players under the bus into an art form. It’s more like throwing the other players under the bus, tying them to the bumper, backing over them a few times, and then dragging them for a few miles. You may think that this is one of those fabled "direct conflict" deck building games. No, it's not. Eaten by Zombies could only be categorized as a “Passive Aggressive deck-building game”. Players never really directly attack each other, but instead modify the environment to benefit themselves, and if someone gets eaten in the process, that’s just life.. or death.. or undeath. Imagine a zombie apocalypse let loose during a family reunion, and you get the drift.

Although there have been a slew of both zombie themed games and deck building games, Eaten by Zombies manages to tackle both with a great deal of originality. The art style in the game is wonderfully distinctive, with its fusion of 1950’s propaganda and zombie horror that manages to be both sinister and humorous at the same time. And, while Eaten by Zombies utilizes deck building mechanics, it only shares some passing similarity with others in the genre, focusing on hand management and deck un-building just as much as deck building; delivering mechanics and gameplay that are just as unique as it’s art style.

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