Players: 2+
Time: 10 minutes (depending on number of players)
Age: 10+ (my kids have been playing it since they were 7…c’mon it’s not hard to figure out)
Comes with everything you see here! Oh, and the rules too. Thirteen dice will determine your fate in Steve Jackson’s Zombie Dice. The object is to be the first player with thirteen brains. Your odds of rolling a brain on a green die are better than rolling a brain on a red die. The yellow dice are neutral.
On your turn, blindly grab three dice from the incredibly-loud-when-you-rattle-it cup and roll. Set aside any brains and any shotgun blasts and take any footprints (your victims got away) and add enough dice from the cup to get back up to three and repeat. Unless/until you get three blasts. If you get three blasts then your turn is over and you score a big fat goose egg for that turn. Better luck next time! Your would-be victims blasted your face off.
I can’t think of a better title for a mindless press-your-luck game than Zombie Dice. That’s not to say that the game isn’t enjoyable; it is. There is just very little strategy to the game and sometimes that’s okay. You’ve got two shotgun blasts to the face and three brains…one more shotgun blast and you forfeit all the brains you’ve rolled this turn. Do you dare another roll in an effort to accumulate more brains for the round? How many brains you and your opponents already have could dictate how you decide.
That’s about the extent of the strategy and that’s what I find so charming about this game. I can sit down with my kids after a long day and just get into dice monkey mode and pay more attention to the conversation than the table. Zombie Dice is everything you want in a microgame.
