They're coming to get you, Board Gamer.
CMON just announced the newest addition to their vast line of successful Zombicide zombie tabletop games, and it's both totally shocking and makes perfect sense: Night of the Living Dead: A Zombicide Game. Based on the classic 1968 horror film by George A. Romero, which itself sparked the zombie movie craze as we know it today, this new Zombicide standalone game casts players as the protagonists from the film and pits them against hordes of undead zombies (or, as they're officially referred to in the film, "ghouls").
But wait, you may be asking, isn't Zombicide a fast-paced game? And wasn't Night of the Living Dead famously full of slow, stumbling zombies? Correct, and that's why this new game has removed two classic types of zombies, Runners (fast zombies) and Abominations (huge hulking monstrosities). They've been replaced with incredibly clever new types of zombies, Breakers (who can smash down barricades), and Ghoul Relatives (these poor shambling undead were once people your characters knew in real life).
And while it's obvious how Breakers will change the gameplay, we have to take a closer look at our protagonists to understand the effect Ghoul Relatives will have on gameplay. In most Zombicide games, players are truly ready to take on the zombies before them, slicing, dicing, and blasting their way through the game. But Night of the Living Dead saw a group of people who were scared, unprepared, and totally confused. To mirror that feeling, each character's card will have two sides, a "Romero Mode" side, where their stats match their on-screen characters, and a more bombastic "Zombicide Mode," which can be triggered when players work together toward their goals. But, because it's so psychologically traumatizing, the appearance of a Ghoul Relative will revert all players back to their Romero Mode sides!
More details are still set to release as we get nearer to the Kickstarter for the game, but CMON's already made it clear that this will be a faster, streamlined KS without stretch goals.
What do you think of this merging of Night of the Living Dead with Zombicide? How do you think these new mechanics will change the game? Let us know in the comments below.
