Available from Amazon.com

Zombie Dice
Steve Jackson Games
Designed by Steve Jackson
MSRP: $13.13

Steve Jackson has dominated the games industry lately with a seemingly endless supply of Munchkin-related games, accessories and knick-knacks. Just to prove there’s more going on at Jackson Labs than Munchkin, Steve Jackson Games released Zombie Dice last year to great acclaim. That acclaim is well-earned: Zombie Dice is fast, fun and addictive, and it’s cheap to boot.

Zombie Dice includes 13 dice, instructions, and a dice shaker/storage container in the package. The instructions are very simple: you (as the zombie) roll three dice at a time, and pick them out of the cup without looking at them. If a brain logo comes up, hooray! – you’ve successfully eaten some brains; set those aside. If the explosion logo is showing, too bad – the intended victim had a shotgun, and fought back; set those to the other side. Get three of those shotgun blasts in one turn and you lose any accumulated brains and your turn ends. Also marked on the dice are footprints, indicating your victim escaped. If you decide to keep rolling, you will re-roll any feet dice, plus enough new ones to add up to three. If at any point during your roll you wish to stop, you “bank” those points and begin from that score next turn. Once you “bank” points, they are safe.

There are three colors of dice, indicating how zombie-friendly they are: the six green dice each have three brains, one shotgun blast and two feet. Four yellow dice each show two blasts, two brains and two feet. The three red dice have three blasts, two feet and only one brain. This is important to know when you’re deciding whether or not to push your zombie luck. If red dice are left in your hand, the odds of a blast coming up are pretty good; you may want to rethink that next roll.

Seven of us played three games of Zombie Dice while eating and watching a baseball game at the local ballpark. There aren’t many games that can lay claim to being such a laid-back – yet still competitive – endeavor, but Zombie Dice certainly can. Not only that, it travels well and can be explained to even a non-gamer in under two minutes. There really aren’t any downsides to Zombie Dice – get out there and buy a copy! I guarantee you’ll have fun.

Five out of Five Stars

Review by Bill Bodden

Tags | horror-comedy, sjgames, Steve Jackson Games, zombies