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DCS: what can I say that is accurate and yet fair? (This is harder than it looks.) In one sentence, DCS looks like someone typed notes about a home-brew system and thought it was so good that it could stand on just the notation form of presentation. This PDF lacks a layout, lacks art, and lacks cohesion. If you are good at putting puzzles together, and if you want to give 5x the patience to deciphering the easy yet confusing rule set, then you MIGHT enjoy this game. However, there is not enough "new" or "sizzle" here to warrant the amount of time it would take to fix it. Even at under $2, in my opinion, this is a "miss". Perhaps with a little more TLC and thoughtfulness, DCS could come into its own.
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I regret giving this such a low rating, as the basic idea is not bad at all. The execution, however, is very poor. The rules are marked by repeated misspellings, grammatical mistakes, and sentence fragments. This is not necessarily fatal, although it detracts from the presentation over-all, but in this case it produces a lack of clarity as well. Several rules appear to have been omitted entirely: reference is made to the humans having weapons, but the only information about them is on the "character cards", and that consists only of the range and how many are killed. When are they used? Are they used instead of what must be hand-to-hand combat (it's never really explained)? The pistol is listed as killing "2". Which 2? Must they be close together, or can it be any 2 zombies in range? And why is the range only 5 squares? An automobile on the map is 3 squares long, so a pistol's range is less than 2 car lengths? And with regard to hand-to-hand combat, what happens if a human moves into a square which is adjacent to more than 1 zombie? Do they all die or only 1? If only 1, does the human automatically suffer hits from the other(s) the next zombie turn? Conversely, what happens if a zombie moves next to more than 1 human at the same time? All of these errors could have been avoided with proofreading and testing. As an introduction to their zombie games this ought to have been a freebie; I definitely regret having spent $2 on it.
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Publisher Reply: |
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Chris
Thank you for your comments. You will notice that we have issued an errata to cover your questions. I hope that helps and your enjoy Dead Things. If you still have questions please feel free to drop me a line and I'll answer them and make the product stronger. If your still unsatisfied let me know and I'll comp your for another product or refund your money.
Best
David |
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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/01/20/tabletop-review-dead-th
ings/
Zombies. We know them – we love them, and try as we might, we can’t escape them. Movies, TV, comics, books, video games, board games, CCGs – the undead menace is everywhere. And, once again, they pop up in board game form in Dead Things.
Developed by DM Fitzgerald and published by DCS, Dead Things is an easy to set up and quick to play board game (that you have to cut out and set up yourself, nothing bad, just making you aware) that pits two to four players against a field of ravenous zombies, and gives them one option – escape with your lives. Yes – lives; this isn’t a case of “first to the finish line wins it all”. No sir, every human has to escape, because if so much as one of you dies – it’s game over, man, game over.
The game follows a fairly standard turn rotation – humans move, attack if they can, each zombie moves towards the nearest character, attack if they can; repeat until finish. The only difference between humans and zombies (besides the sheer, sometimes overwhelming number of zombies) is the fact that humans get to move three squares to zombies one. There is no set direction to follow for either side – just get from the start to the finish however you can.
When it comes to killing and/or destroying, once again, the advantage falls to the humans – while the zombies get a single energy point before they are destroyed, the humans get four “luck chits” which gives them four chances to get attacked before they die (taking the game with them). This may seem a little overbalanced to you, but since the sides measure four (maximum) humans vs. upwards of sixteen zombies, it does even up – especially when you realise that not everyone will get through the game with all four luck chits intact. This luck, however, does regenerate at the end of a turn, which should lead to some strategic play from players if they get hit with a run of real life bad luck.
Now, while the game itself can make for a fun and frantic way to kill half an hour or so, the physical layout of the game (at least of the copy I am reviewing) is rife with spelling and grammar errors. This is nothing that a run with a spellcheck can’t fix, but the errors do serve to make the overall presentation look quite unprofessional.
Fixable errors aside, Dead Things seems like an amusing enough diversion – it’s not something that you’ll pull out again and again, but it seems good enough for a couple of quick games here and there.
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This item is my first purchase on Drive Through, so I'll try my best :).
This is a cooperative board game, simulating a group of modern day people escaping the zombie apocalypse through a parking lot. The game is pretty simple, easy to learn and fun to play. It comes with cards and tokens which you can print out.
The Pros: The game is fun, entertaining and unique. The system is easy to learn, makes sense and is enjoyable. I played it a few times with my regular gaming group and it was fun. I liked the cooperative aspect of the game. It was pretty light-hearted.
The Cons: The only issue I had with the game was the print out tokens. Some of the lines were missing and made it hard to cut them out. I had more fun when I substituted figures for the tokens.
Despite this minor flaw, I would definitely recommend the game to anyone who wants a quick, unique, zombie fighting experience!
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DCS shows some promise, and at least has a decent system, but it shows a lack of depth. For one, there's a lot of stuff that's way too terse, and there's also some stuff that's not terse at all.
Having absolutely no art except the cover in the whole thirty pages wouldn't bother me so much if the typesetting were different, but it feels almost "military typewriter"esque while using plain Times New Roman font, which isn't too hard for reading, but does sorta underwhelm. There's a lot of stuff that's left hanging.
My advice to the authors would be to go back through this and revise it, putting in some typesetting, a stock photo page background (or even just modifying the text and using a program like Scribus and putting a .svg with a neutral background design made in Inkscape, which would be free and simple) put in there.
Ultimately, I like the idea that I feel this was trying to convey, but I feel that it failed to convey it well, and there are too many ambiguities. I recognize that an all-genre system presents some challenges, but there is too much ambiguity when it comes to these (lowest denomination of coins means a lot potentially - pennies don't go far).
All in all, it gets a three for having the ideas of a product with great potential carried out halfway.
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