Just surviving?

 This Tuesday at Enfield Gamers Ian rocked up with a recent Kickstarter offering in the form of Z-pocalypse. In honesty it wasn't a first appearance but I think I was getting Jud-ed at Dreadball at the time so it was my first time more than others.

Board Game Geek says;

Zpocalypse is a survival board game set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Two to four players start in a basement/fallout shelter which can lead out to several base locations or even through the tunnels to sewer grates throughout the transformable board. The survivors are trying to make it day to day in a world torn apart from the walking dead.

As in any survival game, one needs food, guns, ammo, and more. Players go out into the wasteland and scavenge for supplies, or perhaps to find a new gun or melee weapon to fend off the next zombie attack. In addition to gathering supplies, each player forms and controls his own squad – and each squad works to fortify the bases. Your walls and barbed wire won’t hold the dead for long, however, and they’re getting hungry.

Characters receive victory points for killing zombies, building defenses, and successfully completing goals. Victory points show who is soldiering on the best in this wasteland. The final tally of points determines the winner. Victory points also act as experience points for leveling up a character.
The game combines combat, tactics, resource collecting, character development, team play, and strategy towards the goal of surviving in the Zpocalypse!

In short the blurb is not wrong. This is very much a thinking man's Zombie survivor game as compared to Zombicide, think The Walking Dead vs World War Z.

Set over four turns, each of which represents one night, scavenging for food, weapons, equipment and materials to build defences is as if not more important than whacking Zeds. It's also a definate co-op game as each night more Zeds appear who also become more animated and agressive night by night, mutual support is vital.

Each player controls a group of upto four survivors who each have thier own strengths, weaknesses and abilities. Scavenging well is crucial and can recruit extra survivors to your group, equip, armour and feed them. Completing tasks and kill Zeds gain your group experience to unlock combat and weapon abilites that will very soon be put to the test.

For the four of us playing nights 1 and 2 passed well enough and were getting the hang of things approaching night 3 despite having to move bunker due to an event card. Loosing the defenses thatwe had had built up wasn't great but then a further event card saw us quite literally stuck in the mud and unable to make it back to the bunker before the Zeds appeared.

With each player group on a different tile full of ravening Zeds, who got to go first, and nothing to hide behind the game was qucikly concluded without the need to play out night 4!

In all a good fun Zed game with a lot more to it then you'd think, sort of Zombies of Catan. Definately recommended!