Bored? Game! – Dead of Winter

We may have all had enough of Zombies, but any game by boutique American studio Plaid Hat Games (Summoner Wars, Bioshock Infinite: Siege of Columbia) deserves a backward glance even as you flee its shambling army of the undead. Dead of Winter is the first release in the studio’s planned ‘crossroad’ series, the name deriving from a core mechanic that provides a new twist on the medium’s storytelling potential (more on that later). The intention is for them to release a number of games exploring many different themes, and in many ways tackling the well trodden zombie genre makes for a good proof of concept given its populist appeal – if a new mechanic can freshen up the zombie genre, after all, then it can surely work anywhere?

In Dead of Winter, designed by the studio’s rising star Isaac Vega, players take control of a number of survivors in a small American town, splitting their time between their stronghold and various shops, represented by decks of cards, that can be looted for resources (cleverly the split of cards is different in each deck meaning your much more likely to find food in the grocery store, guns at the police station and tools at the hardware store). Zombies steadily flood the locations and, as with that other undead classic City of Horror, can quickly overrun the survivors they’re if not picked off. So far so typical of the genre, but Dead of Winter does add some nice mechanics to mix things up.

For one thing this is a semi cooperative game – along the lines of Archipelago – where players must work together to complete the overall objective, whilst also attempting to fulfil the conditions of their own personal secret agenda, which very often may run counter to the interests of the group (the world may have ended, but as The Walking Dead proved, the selfish machinations of humanity need not). Players may watch with incredulity, for instance, as their supposed ally continually raids the grocery store without once offering any of the food he *must* be finding there to the starving community, because his objective is to hoard. Unfortunately how easy or hard it is to complete your objective varies greatly depending on the scenario being played and whether you’re lucky enough to draw a few extra survivors (thus increasing the amount of actions you can take on your turn).

It’s a nice take on the classic, paranoia inducing Battlestar Galactica, and like that game each round sees the players having to contribute specific resources to resolving a crisis, which can of course be secretly sabotaged

Complicating this is the fact that there is at least a 50% chance that there will be an outright traitor in your midst, whose sole objective is to destroy the colony and win on his own. It’s a nice take on the classic, paranoia inducing Battlestar Galactica, and like that game each round sees the players having to contribute specific resources to resolving a crisis, which can of course be secretly sabotaged. Unlike Galactica, however, there aren’t as many ways of subtly ruining the other players day without making it obvious that there is a traitor. On the other hand if a player has a lot of survivors, which dictates how many actions they can take, they can easily tank the game by going on a killing spree (it’s strangely as easy to kill other players as it is zombies), which leads to some anti-climactic conclusions.

OK, so what about that crossroad mechanic? No, it doesn’t have anything to do with the cheesy eighties soap opera (though there is definitely something soap opera-esque about the way the game can go depending on how deep your group gets into the role playing), but describes a massive deck of cards that spices the game up with some hidden narrative triggers. Basically on your turn the player to your right will draw a crossroad card (anything that gives someone something to do when it isn’t their turn is great) and wait to see if it is triggered by a specific action. This adds a considerable amount of tension to your turn as, as well as ensuring the narrative beats that befall you are highly appropriate (in stark contrast to the cliff hanger cards in Fortune and Glory, which is the nearest analogue I can think of). For instance at one point I used some fuel to move to another location, which means you don’t have to roll the exposure die and risk being mauled by zombies as it’s assumed you are driving, only for the event to trigger as a car crash that caused me to run the zombie gauntlet.

Dead of Winter takes some of the best mechanics from City of Horror (the zombie horde overrun rules, for instance, not to mention the theme) and Battlestar Galactica (the crisis cards, the hidden identities) and mixes them into a thematically heady broth. The result is that Dead of Winter is probably one of the most narratively rich experiences out there, but as with many narrative heavy games it perhaps relies too much on random chance to satisfy many gamers. However it is by no means the worst offender on this front and a few flaws aside (most blatant of which is the ease at which a traitor can tank the game) this is a welcome attempt to make a story rich experience and certainly does enough to set itself apart from the zombie hordes.

Designer: Jonathan Gilmour and Isaac Vega
Publisher: Plaid Hat Games
Mechanic: Action point allocation, storytelling, hand management, semi-cooperative
Number of Players: 2-5 (best with 5)
Playtime: 2-4 hours (different scenarios are different lengths)
Complexity: Medium