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Non-final cover
For those not familiar with Escape: The Curse of the Temple, in that game players are exploring a temple, finding magic gems, and trying to escape before the ten-minute time limit expires. To do anything in that game, players roll dice, with each player having her own five dice and everyone rolling simultaneously. To move from one room to another, you need to roll the icons shown on the tile you're moving to; to reveal a new room, you need the right icons; to find gems, you need the right icons — and in many cases you need to move with other players so that you can pool your icons and find bigger gem caches; to exit the game, you need to first find the exit tile, then have everyone reach it and roll the right icons, with that number being dependent on how many gems you've collectively found during the game. If you don't find enough gems, you have no chance of escaping.
Twice during the game, you need to return to the start tile to avoid being caught in a partial temple collapse; fail to make it, and you lose a die. If a die ever shows the cursed icon, that die is locked until you or a player sharing your tile rolls an icon to free that die. The game includes two expansion modules, and multiple large and small expansions are available separately that add all sorts of beneficial or complicating wrinkles.
Escape from Zombie City is another co-operative game that keeps the core of the earlier design: Players roll dice in order to move to different city blocks or reveal new city block tiles, sometimes getting dice locked due to fear icons until someone is able to unlock them. Twice during the game, players must return to the central start tile or else they lose a die for the remainder of the game.
The twist comes, as you might expect from the name, from the presence of zombies who are trying to hunt down the few souls still surviving in the city. Whenever you reveal and place a new city block tile, that tile will often feature a spawn icon or a die icon. In the former case, you must place one or two zombies on the tile, with each zombie showing a number and one of the die icons; in the latter case, you use a randomizer to determine whether you spawn zombies on that location or move all of the existing zombies toward the start tile at the center of the board. (Each tile bears a skull, and when you place a new tile, you must place the skull toward the tile you already occupy. Zombies always move in the direction of skulls.) If a zombie moves onto a tile occupied by a player, that player loses one of her dice (a) until the end of the next countdown or (b) until the exit tile is in place and players have found all of the survival materials they need to collect.
Queen's developer Frank Thyben (left) keeps an eye on our progress during a test game at BGG.CON 2013
Yes, instead of gems, in Escape from Zombie City players need to collect six different items deemed essential for survival — such as gas, canned food and a crowbar — with those items being divided into three types: health, food, and vehicle. Instead of a die or spawn icon, some tiles feature a icon for one of these three types. When you reveal one of these tiles, you place a survival token of the appropriate type on this space — but you don't get to see exactly which token it is. If you reach this space and roll (by yourself) the proper number of die icons, you claim the item, reveal it and place it in your backpack. If it's one of the survival materials you still need, you must return to the start tile and drop it off there; if not, you can discard it or possibly use it for a special effect. (This latter detail is still being developed, along with a few other things.) After each countdown, material locations that are empty are refilled with a new tile.
During all of this movement by players, zombies keep appearing, then moving toward the central start tile. If a certain number of zombies reach this tile, you all lose the game immediately.
Once players have located all six survival items and moved them to the start tile, they collectively board a bus, then drive it to the exit tile, which depicts a highway on-ramp. To move, the players collectively need to meet certain die targets, putting everyone in the same mind set and leading to lots of yelling directed at whoever isn't pulling their weight. Oh, and once you reach the exit, you need to take down a zombie boss before you can hit the road. One last little complication there...
At BGG.CON 2013, I played the prototype twice, with us barely falling short of the exit tile in the first game and reaching the highway with seconds to spare in the second. Queen Games developer Frank Thyben is still tweaking numbers and adjusting details of gameplay, and players will likely be tweaking as well to adjust for player counts and skill level. We had a two zombie cushion in the start tile, losing the game only when the third zombie entered, which therefore allowed us to ignore a couple of the brutes when we had more important things to do. You can also adjust the zombie assortment to remove weak or strong zombies and vary the difficulty level of the game. (We also had the advantage of Thyben drawing tiles for us and answering questions, which undoubtedly gave us an edge toward winning. Thyben not included in the final production.)
One additional difference from the original Escape game is that Escape from Zombie City has a fifteen-minute timer instead of ten. Why the additional time? Because whenever a player draws and places a new tile, everyone else must pause. Ostensibly this is so that everyone can participate in moving the zombies (if needed), but the pause also allows everyone to survey the board for zombie hotspots and reassess where needed items might be located and which dice they want to save for their next roll. In addition, when the tile-placing player announces the pause — typically in a frantic voice, one pitch higher than normal — everyone can decide whether to pause the pause to try to leave their current tile so as not to be trod upon by a moving zombie.
In the end, Escape from Zombie City does exactly what Queen set out to do: Recreate the Escape experience in a new setting with challenges that force you to rethink how you play the game. My only question: Which knucklehead thought it would be a good idea to live in a place called "Zombie City"?!
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