Game Trade Magazine - GTM #171

GTM #171 - Dead Panic

Reviewed by Jane Trudeau-Smith and Philip Smith

If you love Castle Panic, you will equally love Dead Panic, which is our review for this month! Just like our show, we use five criteria to rate the game, scoring 1 to 5 (5 being the best). We have to first thank a wonderful person named Kris at Fireside Games, as when we first opened the game we realized we were missing a piece, and one of the pieces was printed incorrectly. We were still able to play and review the game, but emailed Fireside and within 2-weeks, we had the replacement pieces. Thank you, Kris, for WONDERFUL customer service!

Is Dead Panic easy to learn? To be fair, we had already played Castle Panic (another great game), so we knew the basic mechanics of play. However, Dead Panic introduces options like Survivor tokens, The Rescuer token, range rules, and Radio pieces to call for help. The premise is zombies attacking, instead of monsters attacking in Castle Panic. We love Zombie games! We gave Dead Panic a score of 5 for easy to learn. The rulebook was very clear, and offered lots of diagrams, too!

How is the manufacturing of the game? Only because we were missing a piece, and the one piece was printed wrong we gave it a 4! Otherwise, the board and pieces are nice and sturdy, and as we said, we got the replacements within 2-weeks.

Did we enjoy this game? We loved this game and gave it a 5 for entertainment value – although at one time we thought for sure we would both die – and lose! We feel this game would be better if played with more than two players, to give the team a better shot at winning against the zombies, but in the end we won, so it is possible to do so with just two.

This is a collaborative game where all players are fighting against the zombies! We like collaborative games as we are not just trying to win against each other all the time. The board consists of a wooded area, with an abandoned cabin in the middle where each player’s character starts. The cabin has walls that you setup at the start of the game.

The zombies keep coming… They will first crack the walls, then tear them down, sending you fleeing into the woods! The team goal is to find all three radio pieces, then call for the rescue van! When the van is in play, all players must attempt to board it to escape this zombie madness! There is a “bait” token to show who is starting play. During a round of play, each player:

Performs two actions which could be drawing a Cabin Card, using a Cabin card, move a space, trade or give radio pieces or cards, repair a wall crack, collect a radio piece (if found), assemble the radio, call rescuers, move or shoot from van (if in play). On your turn, you need to figure out your best actions at that time – the cabin cards have lots of weaponry that can be used against the zombies – some only have a certain amount of “shots” and if you use them all it turns into a “club” for one more use.
Draw an event card – not the fun part for the team because more zombies are coming! There is a bag filled with zombie tokens; at the beginning of the game, some of them get a head start! When you draw the event card, you are determining how many more zombies to draw. The card may also have a special feature that moves zombies faster, or does other mean things. There are also Survivor tokens that act as another character in the game, and can help you fight the zombies. But… If a Survivor dies, he or she drops a radio piece for you to find, and then turns into a zombie! A survivor also drops a radio piece for you if they make it to the cabin alive.
Move the zombies – based on the type of zombie, or on special features from the event card, you start moving the zombies toward the cabin and toward characters. Zombies head toward you if they see you.
Fight the zombies – the best part! If one or more zombies are occupying the same space as you, it is time to battle! During this part of the round, you use weapons, dice, and special abilities to try to beat each zombie’s fight value. If you tie, nothing happens, if you beat it, the zombie is taken off the board, but if it beats you, a decision is made – you can either drop the weapon you fought with, losing it OR take an injury token – If you get three injuries your character is turned into a zombie!

Play continues until you all get to the van and escape (team win!). ON THE OTHER HAND, if everyone turns into zombies, you are all defeated!

How was the length of play? Being busy working adults, we like games that do not take too long to play. Dead Panic took us almost 2-hours to play, so it was a little longer than we like, but we honestly did not even notice the time going by as we were having so much fun trying to kill the zombies! We gave it a 4.

Last is, would we play this game again? We would definitely play this game again, as long as we have the time. We really want to try this game with more players. You can have up to six playing, and we think that would be even more fun. We gave it a score of 5!

Dead Panic receives a 23/25, which is a great score! For more game reviews, do not forget to watch our show at www.tablefortwoshow.com or on You Tube! Check out our Facebook page and tweet us @tablefortwoshow! We would love to hear what you think about our reviews and if you have tried this game or others we’ve reviewed.