Carnival Zombie (2nd Edition)

Get out or stay forever!

In this 1-6 cooperative board game your team has three days to escape from Venice before the undead leviathan upon which the city was built upon rises from its slumber, and for some reason there are zombies in your way! The components are great and the game itself is pretty simple once you get into it, but the rule book could have used some improvement. Anyway, regardless of the number of players you will almost always have all six characters in the game which takes place in two distinct phases: day and night.

There are no zombies during the day so your team just moves along the city map, hopefully avoiding the areas that sink, towards one of the many ending mini-games (or the "you're doomed, just fight until you die" mini game if you fail to escape). You must balance the time you spend moving with the time you spend resting, building barricades, scavenging items or reviving downed team mates which is not an action you can do at night.

The night phase is the meat of the game, which is simply a tower defense against a veritable army of cubes (representing various regular zombies) and figurines or standees that represent the zombie bosses. The terrain varies based on what part of the city you are in, but generally you want a LOT / ALL of barricades to take the damage as it is easy to be overwhelmed. Range and damage are based on your weapons, but you can never miss so you'll almost always be removing cubes from the board.

The BEST part of the game is the small tombstone cutout which you then have to drop your kills on. It doesn't have to be from a height, but it fills up quickly and should ANY of the cubes fall out, you take minor damage (unless you are near death which means EVERYONE takes minor damage) AND all the cubes that fall respawn on the map! Very fun and very funny with constant tension. Definitely recommended!