Zombie Dice

Zombie Dice is by Steve Jackson Games and it is good for adults or kids from about the age of 3 I think, though you need to be very careful as it has small pieces that could be swallowed so please do not think this game can be played by a 3 year old alone.  Do 3 year olds entirely get this game - definitely not - but do they love rolling dice, colour matching and playing with whoever - definitely yes.  So here is how Zombie Dice actually works and how I adapt it for my little one.  It plays 1 player to any number really as you pass the whole dice cup around, the only downside of lots of players is that it takes a while to get back to your turn. I have played this with 8 or so teenagers and they all loved it. It has lots of "oh" moments where everyone is tensely watching someone else push their luck and loose.

 Zombie Dice is a push your luck game a bit like blackjack where you are choosing to hit or stay on the hand of dice you have rolled.  You start by putting all 13 dice into the cup.  You pick out 3 without looking into the cup and roll them.  Any brains are ones you get to keep as points, any shot gun blasts get kept as damage.  The feet get to be re-rolled but only if you decide to push your luck.  The entire point of the game is that you are trying to eat (as a Zombie) 13 brains before the other players.  It is hard to do in just one turn (although possible) and so if you get a few brains and not very many shot guns then you can decide to keep your brain points.  For example in this picture on the right I had 4 brains, 1 feet and 1 shot gun, so I end my turn and I get 4 points. All the dice go back into the cup and it goes onto the next player with me remembering my points.

Now to feet.  You must only roll 3 dice at a time. So for example in the picture on the left on my first go I had one brain and two feet. If I choose to continue playing I must pull another dice out of the cup and roll the two feet I already had and one extra die to get back up to 3 total. You must always be rolling 3 dice at a time. I get to keep my brain as a point this round as long as I don't get 3 shotguns which ends my turn and I don't re-roll the brain.

The difficulty of this game is in the fact that the coloured dice have different amounts of brains to feet to shotgun ratios - so green are easy, yellow are medium and red are hard.  For example if you pull out three red dice and roll three brains it is easier to believe you won't get as many shot guns and so therefore can push your luck with a little safety.  However all the dice do have shotguns on them so still be wary of those blasts.

The Danger!  If at any point in your turn you get 3 shotgun blasts you loose any points in brains you gained that round. For example in the photo on the right I loose the two points and I have to put all the dice back in the cup for the next person. I do not loose any points I had banked previously in other rounds, only this one.

Now the way I adapt this for kids:  Basically we walk them through each step. I say take out three dice and roll them. My son loves this part and even when he gets three shotguns on the first turn he is still happy. Over the course of year he is beginning to be more cautious as he understands now that he cannot win if he doesn't save brains when he gets a few of them and not very many shot guns.  The first few months we played he lost every game but still had fun and I even let him cheat a bit by pushing his shotgun total to say 5 instead of 3.  However after a few months he started to understand that actually you don't want the shotguns you want the brains.  He still doesn't get (after a year of playing) that reds are harder than greens so he should be careful with those - but all in good time.  There are definitely days where he just doesn't want to play the actual game and those days we just roll dice and play with brains. I mean what is the harm in that!  Other days he might just shake the dice in the box and on those ones we make up songs about Zombies or running away - its great.  Really either way we have definitely had a few good years out of this game and that is playing with adults and kids.

The only bad thing you could say about this game is that the red tops and bottoms don't stay on the cardboard tube that well - but this is a really old version of this game and I think modern versions have solved this problem by being slightly more robust. My son loves that the bottom falls off the tube if he shakes it really hard and has created his own game of dice pickup (you can imagine how much fun that is for the rest of us though 😓) So really very little bad to say then!

Here is another Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) that you can get Zombie Dice from - this one is called Leisure Games.  They sell it cheaper than most places I have seen but basically the price is between £12-15 in general.

Good luck and eat those braaaaaains!