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The postcards in every local drug store read, "Welcome to Fabulous Farmingdale!", an ad campaign that was the brainchild of Mayor Hernandez (who coincidentally employed his wife's public relations firm to market their community). But right now, things are far from fabulous in Farmingdale and, for once, everyone isn't blaming the Mayor. Some kind of virus or poison is turning ordinary people into vicious, zombie-like killers. It is not clear how the disease spreads (though it seems that physical contact is certainly one way), but it is obvious what the illness does to its victims.
These undead, nicknamed "Zeds" from the local newscasts as the acronym for "Zombie Epidemic Disease," are now converging on your corner of the world around Farmingdale. As best you can tell, you have been left to your own devices to stop them while the National Guard organizes a relief column, but that could take days, perhaps weeks, for them to fight their way to you and until then, what can you do?
With little choice between survival and a gruesome (un)death, you realize that you must coordinate the defense of the town of Farmingdale and its surrounding villages. You must lead the good citizens and emerging heroes of these communities to halt the Zeds' advances by (re)killing them, attempt to coordinate the discovery of a cure to this vile scourge, and preserve as much of the area and as many of its inhabitants as possible. There's no time to lose...
- Creates memorable story moments
- High replayability due to generated moments
- Unforgiving and harsh
- Massive rules overhead
- Intimidating with 5 rulebooks
- Zombie apocalypse defense
- Town under siege by zombies
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Survival — trying to stop hordes of zombies
- tower defense — solo only defense game where you're trying to stop hordes of zombies from swarming over a town
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
References (from this video)
- A real tasty tower defense game.
- Cinematic game.
- Fantastic production.
- Knock it out of the park tower defense game that everybody should play.
- Should be on your shelf. There's no question about it.
- 600 rulebooks in the box (though framed positively as hand-holding).
- Protecting a town from hordes and hordes of zombies
- A town
- Cinematic, like a B movie from the 1940s.
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- cooperative play — But, Dawn of the Zeds third edition allows you to play cooperatively or however you want to play it, yeah.
- Horde defense — You're trying to protect a town from hordes and hordes of zombies.
- Solo Play — It started off as a solo game, yeah. That's the only way you can play it as a solo game.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- So remember, if your number one tower defense game isn't on this list, that's because I haven't played it or B that we think it's complete and utter dog [__].
- Castle Panic's a fantastic game to play with children and stupid people that don't understand board games.
- It is actually quite a skillful game, but then I suppose you could argue that it's quite lucky as well, but games with an adequate level of skill and luck combined are generally the best games, aren't they?
- There's like a billion and one scenarios for Zombicide.
- This game is so [__] difficult, I think we've only beaten it once in like over 20 years.
- So, this is tense. It will make your testicles rise into your pelvis like a balloon moving through the stratosphere.
- And it's just a shame that these sort of games with this sense of theme aren't really made anymore.
- Dawn of the Zeds third edition is a fantastic production.
- Carnival Zombie's got a fantastic theme.
- Ghost Stories is one of a kind.
- Ghost Stories is a challenge that you'll keep coming back to because we've only beaten it. We have never beaten it.
- I've never experienced tension like this in a board game.
- Project Elite is an absolutely superb thematic tense action romp that I've been playing for [__] I don't know, years and years and years and I've never got bored with it and it just gives me a [__] hard-on every time I even think about Project Elite, yeah.
References (from this video)
- cinematic and expansive experience
- extensive options and weapons
- requires multiple rulebooks; availability may be spotty
- tower defense combined with narrative layering
- zombie apocalypse with cinematic presentation
- layered, multi-option storytelling
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- card-driven narrative — cards drive events and scale difficulty
- Cube Tower — defense planning against waves of threats
- multi-player variants — supports several players with evolving options
- tower defense — defense planning against waves of threats
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this is a kind of original game.
- it's still a pretty good post-apocalyptic workplacement game, of which there aren't that many.
- This is a deck building game that sort of basically is a clone of Dominion, but with a little bit of a twist.
- it's innovative for 2010 because it uses the SAGs system
- the Tetris like board construction
- random map generator
- they let you build up your car and then you could just go tearing around a map blowing the living [__] out of your opponents.
- it's a zombie apocalypse game but it's so good that it made it onto this list
- the amount of content in the box is absolutely vast.
- Fallen Land post-apocalyptic board game is an absolute mustplay.