Zombie Dice: eat brains, avoid shotguns

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If you like this style of game check out Martian Dice. It has a similar level of difficulty to Zombie Dice, but you start your turn rolling all 13 dice, attempting to abduct humans, chickens, and cows while avoiding the army tanks. Iā€™ve played both and prefer the Martians. PEW PEW PEW

For me all you have to say is ā€œdesigned by Steve Jacksonā€. I assume this is the same Steve Jackson who wrote the Sorcery! series of books, which Iā€™ve just discovered, to my great delight, has been adapted into an interactive game.

You are more blessed than you knew, because there are in fact two completely different game designers named Steve Jackson.

Youā€™re thinking of the British one, who did in fact write the original Sorcery! game-books (and whose digital adaptations are in fact brilliant).

The American Steve Jackson, whose company publishes Zombie Dice, is probably best known today for the card game ā€œMunchkinā€. In the 1970s through the 1990s he was better known for his tabletop RPG work, particularly the ā€œGURPSā€ system ā€“ but his more recent (and much more lucrative) work in making fast, accessible card and dice games has largely eclipsed that.

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Pshaw. Next youā€™ll be telling me that the British beer enthusiast Michael Jackson and the guy who recorded ā€˜Thrillerā€™ are two different people!

Seriously, though, thank you for that. I vaguely remember the ā€œGURPSā€ system, and itā€™s really cool to know who was behind it.

I like Zombie Dice, and itā€™s fun, easy, and portable. Itā€™s definitely a lightweight casual dice game though - there arenā€™t a lot of real choices to make, and you have to wait for everyone else to take a turn so thereā€™s a little downtime. The game is quick enough so thereā€™s not that much downtime, of course. Martian Dice gives you the same sort of thing. Dungeon Roll is something else in the same vein - multiplayer solitaire, very light, simple choices in a cute theme in a neat container.

However if you want something with a little more meat, Iā€™d suggest you check out my game Ninja Dice. Full disclosure that Iā€™m the designer! I made Ninja Dice to plug a few of those issues mentioned above. ND is fully interactive (you donā€™t wait for a turn, everybody is usually playing); thereā€™s a bit more strategy involved; and thereā€™s a unique mechanism in play where the dice location/orientation after they fall are part of the game. Plus it comes in an adorable plushie Ninja head/dice bag thing. ND is kind of a ā€œmediumā€ casual dice game. We just released it and I had a blast playing with folks at PAX East last weekend.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/136587/ninja-dice

But, if you are looking for something in the ā€œlightā€ casual dice game family with games running very quick and very easy, Zombie Dice is definitely something you should check out. Itā€™s fun and easy to pick up and available pretty much everywhere that sells games.

I was in a game store and impulse bought this on Sunday! We havenā€™t played a full game yet, but, it is pretty fun!

Zombie Dice is one of my go-to ā€œfillerā€ games. It can get a bit old if you try to marathon it for hours at a time, but itā€™s great in-between more ā€œseriousā€ games / when you only have a shorter time to play.

Good to hear you found Zombie Dice fun. The game has done amazingly well for us, selling roughly 200,000 in the first four years of its release. Weā€™ve even expanded the game with more dice for everyone who wants to make things just a bit more violent.

http://www.sjgames.com/dice/zombiedice/

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