Played some of my new games this weekend. First up was Zombicide, which I don't think I'd have bought for myself at £60 but which I was delighted to receive.
I think it may have been a kick starter game and it shows, the box, artwork, and pieces are all lovely. You get six survivor mini figures in different bright colours so as you can see them easily on the board, then a load of grey zombie figures in three different types-walkers, runners and fatties, then one additional abomination. Each zombie can move in a certain way and give or receive different levels of damage.
The game board is modular, with each section being a square that is probably about the size of the long edge of an iPad. Each section has parts of streets and inside buildings depicted on it and the other sections extend these areas.
The manual has a section at the end with scenarios. These scenarios use different pieces of the board to build a city block or a street with spawn points in varying places. There are also objective markers and doors into buildings which represented by cardboard chits. Once you've opened a door, you flip the chit over to show a smashed door. The scenarios range from easy, medium and hard and there are more online to choose from.
We played the tutorial one, which only used two pieces of board and takes about fifteen minutes and is a great tutorial to get into the game as introduces all the mechanics. I think it might be the best manual/tutorial I've seen.
Then we went straight into scenario 1, which used 9 sections of board. Just after starting we realised it was a hard difficulty level and then in the space of two turns three of our six survivors got wiped out.
We struggled on and amazingly managed to obtain two of the objective markers but then our remaining characters went down in blazes of glory.
When you take a turn, you can do four actions; move, fight, search or swap an item with another survivor next to you. To fight, you need a weapon and the fighting conditions differ depending on the weapon, so for example you have to be in the same space as a zombie to try and hit it with a pan but can be a space away to shoot it with a pistol. The success of your attacks are determined by rolling dice any more powerful weapons let you roll more dice to increase your chances of landing hits. If you successfully kill a zombie, your skill increases by one which you track with a wee board and slider. The problem with this is, if you skill increases enough to take you up an experience level, every zombie that spawns from now on will spawn according to the highest ranked players experience level, so they will be much harder.
The point of the game differs according to scenario. In some it might be to travel over the map collecting all the objective markers, in another it might be to reach the top experience level and in another it might be to find particular supplies during searches then reach the exit marker with one survivor alive.

We both had a great time playing this game. When we bet up the full blown objective that handed our asses to use, we had to set it up on the living room floor because we didn't have a table big up. It felt a bit like being a kid again and playing with Lego, moving all these wee pieces around on a map. It's cooperative so you discuss what you should do each turn but you still feel responsible if you do well or poorly, perhaps because you have to roll the die yourself. It makes you feel scared when a few zombies spawn near you and you realise that you won't be able to get away because they're blocking your exit but you also feel amazing when you run another survivor round the corner and take out all three with a brilliant shot from dual wielded shotguns.
The game is for 1-6 players and I thought that was a bit odd but it actually looks like it still would be decent when played solo. I think that would take away a lot of the fun of sharing the experience though. When you play with less than four players, each person controls multiple survivors and that didn't detract from the game at all for me.

I would highly recommend this game, it was great fun and despite it being huge and totally impractical I wouldn't be surprised if we played it again tonight.

The zebra crossing represents the edge of a zone, so this survivor is in the same zone as one walker and one zone away from another. The red tile represents a spawn point. Zombies spawn at the end of each turn, once every survivor has played. All the zombies on the board attack if in range, then move, then a card is drawn to see what spawns. The amount and type is determined by the card and the highest ranked survivors skill level.

This is an overview of the board. The black tile with a red cross represents an objective. The yellow triangle tile out in the street represents noise. If a zombie can't see a survivor,it heads for noise. You make noise by attacking with noisy weapons, or smashing open a door with a fire axe instead of a crowbar. You also make noise just by surviving so if all six survivors are together, the zombies will head for you even if they can't see you.