Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
I Walked With a Zombie
I walked with a zombie
I walked with a zombie
Last night
–Roky Erikson & The 13th Floor Elevators
Return of the Living Dead: Zombie Punk Panic (known simply as Zombie Punk Panic for this review) is a dice-rolling stroll through hordes of zombies, all fighting to be the first to have you join their ranks. You’ll need brains (Brains…) to manage a pair of character-specific dice to use brawn to fight them off. Ready for some 80s horror franchise memories? Get your custom dice ready and read on!
Walk Like a Zombie
Your goal in Zombie Punk Panic is simple: working together with your fellow punks, make your way through a graveyard, the streets, and a warehouse filled with Trioxin barrels. You’ll be fighting off hordes of the undead on every turn, working up to a final battle with the dreaded Tarman. Defeat him, and you’ll escape with your lives and your brains. (Brains…)
Just your typical Saturday night in the 80s, right?
It’s Raining Zombies On Wall Street
Players start by choosing a punk character to play and collect the two six-sided dice that match the color on their character’s description card. This card will also have a visual guide to the icons on the die faces—offensive actions, defensive actions, and maybe even a healing action.
The playing board consists of several areas where zombies—represented by zombie dice—will be attacking or waiting to attack from. Location cards (Graveyard, Street, Warehouse) will tell you how many zombies are attacking you—per player—that round. Roll the black and/or red dice and you’ll see which zombies are coming after you now: Crawling, Shambling, Running, or Skull zombies. Between the ranged and melee damage they deal out, you’ll want to finish them off as quickly as possible to survive.
After you know which zombies you’ll be fighting, everyone rolls their characters’ dice and discusses their collective options for this round. Luckily, instead of being immediately overrun by all the undead you rolled at the start of the round, you’re only ever attacked by a number of zombies equal to the number in your punk party. Assign the zombies of your choice to the Active Zone on the board in a space that matches their hit points. Finally, move any remaining undead to the board’s Outskirts area where they will impatiently wait for their turn to attack.
Once everyone has agreed to the plan, it’s time to put it into action and take on the zombies. A typical fight sequence will go something like this:
- Zombies hit with ranged attacks. Your team gets to choose who takes the damage.
- Your team deals out any ranged damage shown on their character dice. You get to choose which zombie takes the damage.
- Zombies who still have hit points remaining, move down the board to the number matching their remaining hit points.
- Zombies follow up with melee attacks, dealing out damage.
- Your team follows up with its melee attacks, damaging individual zombies.
If you’ve killed (re-killed?) all the zombies for this round, that’s great! The current Location card will show you what items you’ll be able to claim (health tokens, weapons, etc.). Then, turn over the next Location card to see who attacks you next.
If after your attacks that round any zombies have hit points remaining, they’re moved to the Lingering Zone. At the end of all remaining fights in that round, each Lingering zombie deals an extra -1HP after your team deals out their melee damage until you re-kill them.
To make things even worse, if you’ve reduced a zombie’s hit points to zero, and there are still zombies coming at you this round, that just-zeroed-out zombie isn’t fully dead. Instead of taking the zombie off the board, you’ll move it to the #3 spot in the Return area. At the end of any additional fights in that round that have remaining zombies, zombies in the Return area move up to a lower-numbered spot. If you take too long to finish them all off, they’ll start returning to the board as Crawling zombies, and you will need to re-re-kill them all over again.
All You Zombies
Depending on whether you’re playing a shorter game or a longer game, you’ll encounter 3 or 5 groups of zombies in each of the three Locations.
After battling your way through the Graveyard and Streets, you’ll encounter a mini-boss. These have 12-15+ hit points (HP) and have six attack options. You’ll need to roll a common six-sided die and read the attack from the front of their character card to find out how bad their attack is on this turn.
It may sound as if your team does nothing but take beating after beating, and while that’s partially true, your characters get some chances to improve their chances. As previously mentioned, each encounter you successfully complete will give you some type of reward. As well, for each character die you roll, you’ll gain a Charge. Charges can be used to re-roll one of your character’s dice or, in sufficient quantities, you can trade them in for special one-use or upgraded character powers—powers you’re going to need if you have a chance at beating the final boss, the Tarman.
Zombies Ate Her Brain
I played Zombie Punk Panic with my regular gaming group—a group that contains a member who wrote horror movie reviews for the online Gruesome Magazine and who is a fan of the original Night of the Living Dead and the Return of the Living Dead series of films. Despite the difference in our ages, we both saw the Return series on the big screen back in 1985. Between my group’s love of dice-chuckers and 80s zombies, this game was an easy choice to review.
Zombie Ghost Train
George Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead (1968) was one of the last great black and white horror films. A decade later, Romero continued his storyline with Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985).
Day of the Dead was released in June/July 1985. A month later, Return of the Living Dead hit the theaters. Jack Russo, a co-writer with Romero on Night of the Living Dead, was a principal writer for the new film, one that diverged from the original series in several important ways: it introduced the concept of zombies hungry for living people’s brains (Brains…) and it was part horror, part comedy.
Part of the comedic flair came from the Hollywood idea of punks. In the movie, these characters are Spider, Trash, Chuck, Casey, Scuz and Suicide. I knew punks back in the day, and those characters were about as punk as the poseurs who frequented Commander Salamander, a store in Georgetown, DC, when I worked at The Kite Site in the early 80s.
The full name of the game is Return of the Living Dead Zombie Punk Panic. Having Tarman as the final boss and using generic, comic book “punks” is as close to referencing Russo’s movies as the game gets.
Even this is only a thin veneer of theme on the game, the system could just as easily be ported over to a Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) scenario or any other fighting game that goes from level to boss, level to boss, etc. If you’re looking for an immersive punk aesthetic in a board game, you should keep looking.
Army of Zombies
Speaking of D&D, if the sequence of fighting events sounds familiar, that’s because it’s not far off: bad guys’ ranged attacks, good guys’ ranged; bad guys’ melee, good guys’ melee. Rinse and repeat.
The difference, however, is that when you’re playing D&D, you get to decide what your character’s actions are. Do you attack? Defend? Heal? Hide? It’s up to you. We here at Meeple Mountain have discussed the concept of agency in games many times. It’s an essential element for me to become involved in the scenario a game is creating. (To learn more, my friend and colleague K. David Ladage wrote an article on the topic titled Player Agency in Board Games.)
Zombie Punk Panic limits your agency to which zombies your team will take on in what order, who will hit whom, and who will take damage. The Hows of the fight are determined by the roll of two six-sided dice. Granted, the who will hit whom & when is an interesting little puzzle, but it’s far too brief in a game that feels largely pre-determined.
Healer
Punk characters each start with 8 HP, and within a few rounds, that number will probably lessen. Taking damage at the rotting hands of your zombie enemies is inevitable.
To recover from this, you’ll either need to find lots of health tokens at the end of a round—or have had the foresight to include someone with Healing abilities in your punk party.
To return again to D&D, anyone who has participated in a successful raiding party knows the value of including a Cleric or Mage who can heal the party after taking serious damage. Go out on an adventure without them and you’ll quickly be rolling up a new character.
That Zombie Punk Panic requires healers is not an issue. What bothers me though is that the only two characters who can heal are both female.
When I pointed this out to a friend at the gaming table, he shook his head. “Really?” he asked.
Really.
What’s in Your Head? In Your Head?
While Zombie Punk Panic needs some work before I would revisit it, it is worth considering for the right audiences. If you grew up in the 80s or 90s and saw Return of the Living Dead in theaters or, more likely, managed to convince your parents to rent it on VHS from Blockbuster on a Friday night, this might be for you. Getting together with some friends to roll some dice and laugh through some brains-loving nostalgia would make for a great evening.
If you’re a parent of late-primary school-aged children, teaching them the rules and letting them plan out the battles together would be a good exercise in cooperation. It too could make for a fun gaming session.
Return of the Living Dead Zombie Punk Panic is coming to Gamefound soon. If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, keep an eye out for it!
