Zombicide

[ricdude]

For those of you who like medium-length tabletop/miniatures games, I highly recommend this game.  My kids (8 and 12), wife and I are quite enjoying it.

Manufacturer's website with more detail: http://zombicide.com/en/zombicide

The basics: It's cooperative multiplayer - everyone against the zombies.  All players take a turn, performing actions like moving, searching, making noise and attacking.  Then all the zombies move, either towards players they can see, or towards the loudest area if they can't see anyone.  Then more zombies spawn.  Then the players go again.  As players kill more zombies and gain experience, the "danger level" increases, and even more zombies are spawned, or certain types of zombies get an extra turn.  Players gain different advantages as they gain more experience, too, so it's not entirely hopeless.  Stay alive, and try to meet the victory conditions of the scenario, or go down trying. 

The rules list 10 scenarios, from "learn the basic rules" to "expect to spend 3 or 4 hours slugging it out", with more scenarios downloadable from the manufacturer's website.  Also, depending on how the zombie spawns work out, the same scenario can turn out very differently a second time: from "This building looks safe to clear out." to "Run Away! Run Away!"  If you're so motivated, you can arrange your own scenarios with the reversible map tiles, "objectives", spawn zones, doors, etc.

If that's not enough for you, there are some expansion packs, adding dogs or new survivors into the game.  There are even "Toxic Mall"  and "Prison Outbreak" extensions - complete games in themselves with their own scenarios and additional features.  Prison Outbreak, for example, adds security gates that must be triggered to rotate or open.  Sometimes, this will mean more zombies to battle.  Sometimes, it just means you have more space to hide.  Sets can also be combined to create insanely huge scenarios with tons of zombies to battle.

Anyway, just thought I'd share a cool game we enjoy over here.  Have fun!