Zombie Dice game review

I love the zombie genre, so when a novel game comes out in the genre that is both quick and simple to learn I have to run out and get it. Zombie Dice is one of those games.

Small game for your shelf, big fun for the game

Zombie dice is a simple press your luck style cup and dice game. The components are the cup, the rules and 13 dice. During each turn the player blindly takes 3 dice from the cup and rolls them. As a zombie you are hoping to get brains. The other results are shotgun blasts, which hurt you, or runners. After you roll separate out the brains and shotgun blasts. Once you get three shotgun blasts you lose everything you rolled this turn. You can choose to roll again, topping up the dice rolled to three, include any runners you rolled as these people got away.

So if on the first roll I got one brain one zombie and one runner I would probably chose to roll again. The brain would go to my winning dice side, the shotgun blast to my damage side and I would select 2 new dice blindly to add to the runner. Roll again and repeat until a) you decide to pass to the next player (keeping track of the brains you won) b) you take three blasts and die (don't worry your undead again on your next turn) or c) you run out of dice to roll.

Oooh Dice with brains

The first player to collect a total of 13 brains is winning. All other players then have one turn to collect more brains to be declared the winner. The dice in the game are colour coded. The six green dice have the most brains (3) 2 runners and only 1 shotgun blast. The four yellow dice have 2 of each result, and the three red dice have the most shotgun blasts (3) 2 runners and a single brain. It is a very good idea to keep a count of which dice are available before rolling again.

A couple of minor issues with the game. You will need to get some counters or a pen and paper to keep track of the brains players collect as these are not included. The lids on the cup tend to come off if you travel with this game so expect to be hunting for dice often.

The game is usually over in 10 to 20 minutes, so it’s a great time killer game. It works really well when you just feel like a simple game, or as the “appetizer” for a night of gaming.

To sum up I would recommend Zombie dice for any gaming group. The game is simple and short while still being entertaining. The zombie genre doesn’t always please everyone but the simple mechanic and theme should make the game accessible to all players.


Check back next week when I review Munchkin Booty, the pirate version of Munchkin.