Tiny Epic Zombies

Today we’re checking out Tiny Epic Zombies – a survival game designed by Scott Almes and published by Gamelyn Games. If you’re not familiar with the Tiny Epic line, I highly recommend you check them out. My current favorites from the series are Galaxies and Defenders, but they’re all pretty good at what they do – which is offer full fledged gaming experiences in small packages.

Zombies can be played on five slightly different game modes ranging from solo to cooperative to competitive. Depending on the mode, players can control human or zombie characters – the humans must survive inside the Echo Ridge Mall and complete objectives to win, while the zombies must kill off the humans and prevent them from achieving those goals. Let’s take a look.

As expected from Gamelyn, production quality is fantastic across the board (or across the cards, so to speak). The artwork by Miguel Coimbra (7 Wonders) feels like it came right out of a high end comic book, and it looks amazing. Lean on the age rating a bit here, as some of the images could be understandably scary for younger players. We have a three year old, and only break Zombies out after he’s asleep.

Fans of the Tiny Epic series will find most of the components to feel pretty familiar – which is good, because the Tiny Epic line has historically premium components. The box is the same signature size, with the same signature oversized cards making up much of the play area. Zombies also sees the return of ITEMeeples, which are meeples that can actually hold items in their hands. Some see this as a gimmick, and to be perfectly honest it is. That doesn’t make it less any cool in my book. I love ITEMeeples – not only because they look cool on the table, but because they add a visual reminder of items I might have forgotten about otherwise. Aside from that, Zombies comes with a normal sized deck of cards, some wooden zombie mini meeples, and some cardboard chits to mark objective objectives.

Compared to other Tiny Epic games, Zombies has a much more involved setup process. The game has a lot more pieces than you might expect. Most of this is driven by variable setup options like different objectives, alternate art on the map cards etc. Thankfully, most of the variable parts of setup are explained clearly on the objective cards, so it isn’t overly complex. If I were to nitpick, I would point out that much of the variable setup is unnecessary. A lot of the objectives boil down to the same basic steps – go to area, clear out zombies, collect chit of some kind. Not all of them work this way though – which makes me think it would be better to have predetermined objective sets instead of randomly drawing them.

I have mixed feelings about the rule book. On one hand, it explains all of the game mechanics pretty well, the graphic design is great, and everything is explained in a logical order. On the other hand, the rule book explains the human versus zombie player game mode first (which I find to be one of the weaker modes – don’t worry, I’ll explain), and only touches on changes for the other modes later in the book. This means, for players like myself who want to play the co-op vs AI and solo modes, there is a lot of flipping back and forth to get a handle on how the game works. That said, once you do get a handle on the rules, the game is pretty stinking fun.

The turn structure in Zombies is pretty unique. Instead of having a list of actions to choose from, human players have a list of actions they have to complete. Every turn, players must “move” three times, then search the room they are in for items. Each “move” might include killing a zombie, using an ability in a room, collecting a token, and collecting items. This means it is entirely possible, even probable, to kill multiple zombies in one turn. On top of that, if a player is using melee and rolls the green overkill icon on the melee die, they get a free “move”. Chaining together multiple overkill rolls could potentially result in a player clearing the whole map, if luck was on their side.

Once all three moves are complete, players “search”, which means they place the next card from the search deck adjacent to the room they are in for other players (or themselves) to collect in the move phase later on. You might think this sounds too mechanical or pre-programmed, but what it actually accomplishes is a sense of urgency and movement. Every turn, human players feel like they’re running and gunning down zombies and fighting to stay alive.

Zombie player turns, on the other hand, do feel very mechanical. The Zombie player checks to see if the most recently revealed Search Card’s suit matches the room that the last player is in. If the symbols match, they get to perform an ability and advance a token on a track. If not, they continue to the last step of the zombie turn, which is to add two zombie meeples to the board in a room that matches the same search card. The only real decision the zombie player has is whether to put both zombies in one room, or split them up. They do eventually gain a few more decisions as they collect new zombie cards, but the general feel of the zombie turn is pretty bland. The zombie AI, on the other hand, works wonderfully. It actually works about the same as the zombie player. Unless I miss my mark, I’d say Scott designed this as a solo and co-op game first, and added the possibility of competitive modes later.

The only other thing that I might change would be the timer mechanic being the search deck. I’m totally cool with it being linked to the search deck in some way, but just ending the game because you don’t have items to work with feels underwhelming. This is especially true when you’re really not struggling to survive at all. I would have liked the end of the search deck to exponentially increase the number of zombies that have to be dealt with. Maybe add one zombie in every store every turn or something, I don’t know. I just feel like getting overrun by zombies should have felt a little more climactic. Longer games just kind of fizzle out, even if you’re actually feeling pretty strong.

All of that said, I like Tiny Epic Zombies quite a bit. I think the zombie player turns are boring, and that fact makes the rules flow a little less smoothly than I would have liked. I probably won’t play the game in any of the competitive modes again, but the solo and co-op modes are more than fun enough to carry the game and earn it a spot on my shelf. The unique turn structure for human players ties the theme, art, and game mechanics together beautifully – the constant motion really underlines the feeling of urgency you would expect from fighting off an endless hoard of zombies

If you’re looking for a solid solo or co op experience, Zombies is definitely worth a look. If you want a more competitive game, you might want to look elsewhere unless the zombie theme is particularly attractive to you. Regardless, Tiny Epic Zombies is a welcome addition to my Gamelyn collection.

Review copy provided by Gamelyn Games.

Publisher: Gamelyn Games
Number of Players: 1-5
Playtime: 30-45 min
Age: 10+
Price at time of Review: $25

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