Earth: The Last Night There

Wife and I have been playing a new (to us) board game called Last Night on Earth. It's a survivors versus zombies spoof of those awful B-horror movies some of us love so much. One player (or team of players) plays the role of 4 human survivors drawn from a pool of 8. Each has different abilities, and while the items and weapons make the biggest difference in the game, the abilities help differentiate the heroes from each other a bit. You'll see many horror movie stereotypes here: the drifter, the high school quarterback, the priest, the drifter and the nurse among others. The player controlling the heroes get 4 characters, the player(s) controlling the zombies gets a pool of 14 zombies to use.

There are different scenarios in the game, each with different winning conditions. "Die Zombies Die!" simply asks the heroes to kill 15 zombies before dawn, while the "Gas up the Truck" scenario requires the heroes to find gasoline and keys, then get at least 2 heroes to the truck in the center of the map. Each team moves around the map, draws cards and engages in combat with the other team (though more often the heroes are trying to escape from the zombies.) There are lots of dice to be rolled, as this is very much an Ameritrash game: lots of combat, lots of dice, heavy theme, plenty of interaction with opponents, etc.

Last Night on Earth is good, campy fun. Between the card drawing and die rolling, there is definitely a strong element of luck, but there is plenty of room for strategy and decision making. It's a great game that isn't made to be taken too seriously. It's kind a lighter cousin to Arkham Horror, which is exactly what I wanted when I picked it out. I'm anxious to try this with more than 2 players.