This is a small-yet-excellent rpg I first wrote down around the Christmas of -06, after having finished my work on the Finnish edition of The Mountain Witch and before starting on Primetime Adventures. To my surprise, the game proved something of an evolutionary success in the local scene, so far so that I hardly got to play anything else during the next spring. I published the game in Finnish that summer and continued playing it until I was sick with the whole notion of zombies. Now I have an English edition of the game, here.

As I’m writing this, the game itself is just a bunch of components in Ron Edward’s garage in Chicago, where I’m going to go next week to put the box sets together. Then we’ll go to Gencon and hope dearly that the game doesn’t flop. Meanwhile, dear reader, be my guest and order the game if you’re interested in zombies. The directions to the right should help with that. I’ll fulfill any European orders right away after I return from Gencon with my bags full of zombies.

I’ll make this a real website during the autumn months, but for now we’ll have to make do with this punchy one-page solution. I hope that one of the following headings works for you, if you’re looking for information on the game.

What is it?

Zombie Cinema is a boardgame for 3-6 players, age 12+. One game takes 2-3 hours, all told. Learning the game takes ten minutes. The game is a cooperative storytelling exercise wherein the players create a story very much like a zombie movie. As my personal experience has it, about half of the time you’ll get something that is significantly better than any zombie movie I’ve actually seen.

What it says on the box

Nobody knew when it started, or why. Perhaps the lonely death of a spinster was one too much for angels to bear, or a chemical leak in the ground-water had unexpected consequences. Only one thing is certain: now the dead walk.

This story game is about the zombie apocalypse and the desperate choices of the survivors. Not only do these characters scramble over each other trying to find safety, but they may also cooperate and even sacrifice themselves so at least a few might survive the story.

Zombie Cinema is quick to set up, easy to learn and it’s designed to play from start to finish in one evening, making for an excellent party game or a first step into a new hobby. The game box includes everything required to create stories of survival horror with your friends.

What you get for the price

What the back of the box doesn’t say (it being obvious if you have the box) is that the game is packaged into a VHS cassette case. I love that solution! It’s durable, stylish and easily reopenable. Looks just like a movie. Cool all around.

There’s also all sorts of boardgame stuff inside the box. Here’s the component list:

Game Components:

27 Cinema Cards
1 game board
6 character pawns
6 dice
1 zombie pawn
1 round marker
1 rules sheet

Some playtest reports, actual play and such

Zombie Cinema has been played by playtesters and other interested folks. Some of those tests have even been reported on in English, in case you want to check out what the players thought of the game. I should warn you that playtesters seem to get all seven sorts of zany comedy out of the game, which I personally find utterly baffling: when I play, the game is rather bleak and horrorful, with an ironic twist usually killing the last character all dead without a shred of hope.

Love Boat Under Siege
Yikes! Zombies!
No brain, no pain!
This time with vampires
Most fun I’ve had in a while

There are also a couple of older threads from the Forge here; those are about the development of the game, in case you want to see what I’m trying to do and stuff. I’ll rewrite all this material later on into some real essays, but for now we’ll have to do with some old forum discussions, instead.

What the game is designed to do

How we manufactured the Finnish version of the game.

The Finnish version

Now, if you’re Finnish or otherwise have obtained the Finnish version of the game, you might be interested in what’s changed in the English version and whether it’s worthwhile to get that as well.

• The largest change is that instead of character creation sticks you get cards: there’s not as many of them, but they have nice illustrations that might make the game more appealing on approach.
• The rules of the game are the same as before, but they are written in a very different manner. The Finnish version is very verbose compared to the English one, which I’m planning to compensate for by writing a couple of strategy articles here later on. The English manual is better (in my opinion) when you open the game for the first time and need to start playing right away; if you already know the game, however, then the Finnish manual is probably better for the nuances, examples and strategy.
• To answer the key question, I probably wouldn’t get the new English edition of the game myself if I already had the Finnish one. But then, I prefer the sticks to the cards in character creation, and the Finnish game board with it’s art prints is just badass.