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In May of last year (2016) the coworkers and I decided to test out the heavily themed and complicated Dead of Winter, which simulates The Walking Dead. Except that it’s in winter time, so the stakes are a little bit higher. You’re already familiar with the story: a group of people are holed up somewhere and have to survive the winter by scavenging for food, medicine, weapons and fuel, AND, course, survive the onslaught of Zombies.
It’s more or less a cooperative game, since everyone is trying to survive as long as they can until the “mission” is complete. The missions usually range from finding resources to killing shit. However, the thing that makes the game more difficult are the submissions or as the game likes to call them, “Crisis,” which is exactly what it means because you’re always running out of food, or medicine or fuel or weapons and it forces you to make the choice: do I contribute to the mission or do I contribute to the crisis. Oh, did I mention that each person also has a secret mission that helps them win the game.
Do I contribute to the mission or the crisis or my personal mission? On top of that, you’re always losing moral. AND the game also has a timer.
Game Play
So anyway, you jump from location to location hoping that you don’t roll terribly on the die and are forced to fight a zombie. And even if you make it into the a location, you have to be quiet or else the zombies will start gathering at limited spaces the locations. Sometimes you find what you’re looking for. Sometimes you find other people who don’t contribute and just take up resources.
Eventually, all locations will be overrun and the useless people die first, then your characters. Did I mention that if someone dies, morale drops. If morale drops to zero, everyone loses the game.
Game Pieces
I think that it’s super cool that the game has a bunch of stand up figures, but I probably would’ve preferred some nice, simple flat tokens so that it’s easier to spot who is who on the board….I can become quite chaotic as the game progresses. And the artwork is great. There is even a dog with a cape character that you can play. Haven’t had a chance to try that out yet.
Conclusion
I would certainly recommend this game to people who are more experienced gamers. D&D folks might especially like this game. The game itself is the Game Master…there is read aloud text for atmosphere, there are miniature side “what do you do” quests. All in all, I need to get the group to give it another shot.
