Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you all are having a safe candy filled holiday. Tonight is a night that I enjoy sitting down to a table filled with friends and calling on Cthulhu or dusting off the zombie minis for a night of horror games. If you haven’t made your selection on what horror game you and your friends might like to play I’d like to recommend Outbreak: Undead.
Outbreak: Undead is a zombie game that proves your zombie plan will fail. It has everything from the slow shambling zombies of early cinema to the fast running zombies of recent years. The game is also customizable in character creation. You can start out as normal humans or you can be a team of soldiers trained for this kind of thing. My favorite part of this game is the fact that you can make yourself as a character. The game’s website has a quiz you can take to find out your personal stats. Last year I ran an avatar game; it was a lot of fun.
The book is set up like a survivor’s journal; the side notes for the game are clipped on with a paper clip or stuck on with a post-it note, as though the survivors wrote notes on what they could find to help other survivors fight zombies. I really like the look of a book when the graphics do this, as it really gives you a feel for the game itself. In the first printing of the book it was hard to read and find the things you needed to play the game, but with the second printing of the game it is much easier to find what you need in the book. When not playing an avatar of yourself the book has templates for soldiers and firemen and regular people. This game also brings reality into its setting with the number of things that can be used as weapons; from the mic stand at a rock concert to the rock you find in the woods, anything can be used to try to kill zombies. It also has tips for how to fortify a location to keep the horde at bay.
If maybe you aren’t ready to run a game for yourself, every year at GenCon you can find the creators running this game. By the end of it you will be looking at every room to see if you can escape zombies or bunker down for the night. Recently the creators ran a successful Kickstarter for Outbreak: Deep Space. I can’t wait to try it out, fighting off Reavers, out in the black, defending my Firefly class spaceship. Or maybe you are more into defending your fully armed and operational space station from the rebel zombies and recently turned trooper zombies. Whatever scenario you can think of you can play.
I was recently able to catch up with one of the creators, Ivan Van Norman, about future projects. Coming soon will be Saving Throw, a new YouTube channel all about RPGs with tips and tricks on how to play them. Also on YouTube, Ivan will be on Season 3 of Tabletop playing another horror game, Dread. I can’t wait!
What horror games do you enjoy playing this time of year?