New Game Round-up: Zombies Head to Class in Student Bodies, Blood Bowl Sees New Foul Play & Players Buy Games in Essen The Game

In Student Bodies, you play a zombie-bite-infected, but not yet turned, high school student. Standing at one end of a trashed, bloodstained hallway, you listen to a PA announcement from your principal explaining the situation. Apparently your eccentric science teacher's crazy experiments had gone horribly wrong and created a zombie virus! Realizing his mistake, the teacher was able to produce an antidote...just before he was eaten by his former students. Now no one can be trusted, not even that cute girl from band camp. That means you might have to choose between killing a zombie and tripping a friend into the horde to slow them down or eliminate them. Because you start the game infected, simply escaping the school is not an option: You need to get through a horde of zombified students to the science lab at the end of the hall, find an antidote in the lab, then get out of the building. Be the first player to do this, and you win.

Because you're in a high school, you're not going to find shotguns or chainsaws. Instead, you're going to have to improvise with what you do find to give yourself an edge over the other players rather than just find ways to kill zombies.

On each turn, players determine what the zombies do by revealing a card from the zombie AI deck and deciding how the zombies move based on their priorities, a set of rules made to represent a zombie's drive to feed. If they are knocked down, for example, they stand up; if they are adjacent to a player, they attack; if not, they move towards the closest player. On your turn, however, you get to decide who they attack or which way they move if there's a conflict for who's closest.

Once the zombies have moved, the player decides his actions based on his stamina pool, hand of cards, and positioning on the board. Don't forget to check corpses for potentially useful items! At the end of a player's turn, everyone draws up to their hand size, then the next player goes. If a player happens to meet an unfortunate fate before getting the antidote, he continues to play as a smart zombie; unlike the mindless horde, dead players still have a hand of cards, with new abilities, to hunt you down as they see fit while trying to score a secondary win condition by eliminating all living players.

The Women's Suffrage Movement (1900-1920) is covered in a card-driven, partial co-op fashion. The fight is conducted by players using individual, matching decks of cards to fight the challenges of the status quo in place for centuries. Ratification of the amendment requires the acceptance of 27 states. While competing state-by-state individually, players must beat the time frame of history to secure a victory; failure to do so is a loss for all players.

Foul Play introduces the Putrid Players' Guild to the game, with the PPG consisting of three new teams: Nurgle's Rotters, The Lowdown Rats, and The Zharr-Naggrund Ziggurats.

Foul Play also introduces penalties to the game, with players receiving them in various ways, such as by drawing one of the new cheating tokens with the penalty icon or by losing the new Goblin Tribal Leeg tournament. When you receive a penalty, you draw a penalty card and resolve the effects, which are nearly always unfortunate.

Finally, Foul Play introduces stadiums, which are constant throughout a season, offer additional payouts to teams, and come with strict rules about who can play in them. A stadium might ban a certain skill, for example, limit the number of players a manager can use, or impose upper or lower limits to Star Power requirements. Managers can choose to break these rules, but each offense results in a penalty, so you'll need to weigh your options carefully.

Every year in late October, the German city of Essen becomes the game capital of the world. Publishers around the world gather to showcase their innovations to the thousands of gamers who come especially for the occasion.

In ESSEN The Game: SPIEL'13, you play as one of those geeks. With your wish list (shopping list), you wander the aisles of the festival in search of the most popular new games — but to achieve your goals, you must face the harsh realities of this show. You must confront a pervasive crowd and make your way to the stands of your favorite publishers. Unfortunately, the availability of games is limited at the end of the show. You will likely not have the opportunity to buy all of your favorite games. Therefore, you will have to face difficult choices! On the other hand, you have come to Essen to try new games and your desires will change during the day. It is likely that after trying some of them, you will jump compulsively to new purchases.

Be careful not to take on more than you can carry. The increasing number of games that you hold in your bags reduces your mobility through the area. During the day, you need to return to the parking lot to store your purchases in the trunk of your car, which will probably also be the perfect time to check your budget. For all the big spenders, the cash dispenser is available, with the risk of running into debts beyond reason. With an empty bag and full wallet, you have only one thing in mind: Getting back in the show, frantic to buy more games.