Last Night on Earth the board game

Last Night on Earth the board game

Analysis Introduction

Me and my group chose to play and analyze the game Last Night on Earth, which is a zombie themed board game for two to six players. When playing this game there should be at least four human champions on the field against of the players who must play as the Zombie team and controlling several zombies. There are event cards that is drawn at the beginning of the game, deciding the goal of that game. However, when playing the simple mode as we did, the only goal is for the human characters to kill X amount of zombies while the zombies have to kill two human champions.

We chose this game because it seemed to be pretty unique compared to many other board games with a unique theme and stylization of the characters.

Best and worst part of the game

The worst side of this game was that it was heavily based on luck. In many aspects of the game you trusted in the luck while throwing dices or drawing cards, while the rest of the strategy in the game was fairly obvious and everyone knew how to play it. What happens when the game is this heavily based on luck is that it feels rather random how it turns out for the concerned parties.

The best part of this game is that it was very interesting to get to play as the bad guy for once and getting to fight alone or with one co-player against all of the other players.

Core game system

The core system to the game was the movement system since any of the teams won the game by fighting off the other by moving towards the same ground square zone according to the movement system in the game, and then enter a battle. Depending on where you have moved your human you can do different actions. Example – if you are in a building you can search for weapons or such.

The movement system worked fairly differently depending on which team we are looking at.

The Zombies (objects) properties are that they always spawn on one of the four spawn points on the map, and the amount of zombies that can be created always depends on the dice roll. Another property belonging to the Zombies is that they are also worth 1 when getting killed (when the human champions have killed 14 zombies they have won the game). Their behaviors are that they always move one square at the beginning of their turn – they can move diagonally, horizontally and vertically. They can also move through the walls that are drawn on the board. They always move as individuals, independently of any possible zombie-flocks they may encounter or travel alongside. Their relationships are connected to the field they are walking on, the spawn points, the human champions and the dices.

The Humans (objects) properties are that they spawn on the area given to them due to the character cards, that they can search a room if in it and that they have three lives (they can get beaten by zombies three times until they die). Their behaviors are that the amount of steps they can walk depends on the dice roll done at the beginning of their turn – and unlike the zombies the humans can only move vertically and horizontally and not move through walls. Their relationships are connected to the field they are walking on, the spawn points, the zombie champions, the dices and the cards drawn (creating weapons or such) and the wound tokens.

There are many different kinds of tokens and objects for the game, such as hero sheets which contains intriguing information about the characters, information about your character that might be good to know when playing the game since there is some racial abilities that he or she can use during the game.

There are also hero-and zombie cards that contains events and abilities that can be played during different parts of the game. Some of them can be played during a fight while some have to be played immediately or as a response to an enemy player action or attack or dice roll. Heroes cards also contains items that heroes can trade with each other if they are at the same position (zone square) as the human champion that wants to trade with is.

There are also scenario cards that contain the rules about how you win the game as either a zombie player or a human hero player. The one that is used during the simple gameplay is called die zombies die and means that the only goal is for the human characters to kill X amount of zombies while the zombies have to kill two human champions. Bu tthere are some more complicated cards that you can use if you use townsfolk and those cards says that you have to save some of the townsfolk in order to win the game.

There are loads of tokens in the game, tokens for when a human champion is wounded – when the human champion have three wounds he or she is dead. There are many other tokens in the game that my team never tried to use since we were many times too few people to play the more advanced mode.

Most interesting system of the game

It was interesting to see that one of the players had to play as the opposite side for once – this time the Zombies.

While playing as the bad guy you are controlling several hordes of Zombies. The player starts his or hers turn by rolling two dices that shows the player how many of the zombies he or she can place on the board map. There are four spawn points on which the player can place his or hers Zombies. The next step for the Zombie player is that he or she is going to draw four cards from the Zombie Deck. The Zombie Cards are cards that contains events or such that will help the Zombies during different occasions and situations. The player is the only one supposed to look at these cards so that the player’s enemies will never know what may come. But some of these cards can only be played during battle, and some of the cards are marked with Play Immediately which means that the Zombie player have to play them directly one he or she have picked it up. If one or several of the Zombies enters a square zone that a Human champion player is located in the Zombie player and the Human champion player will have to fight. The fight is determined by the two players rolling a dice. The player that rolls the highest dice of the several dices will win. The Zombie player gets to roll a dice for each Zombie that is located in. The human champion will always roll two dices. If there is a tie between the zombie player and the human champion player the Zombie player will win, but for a human champion to kill a Zombie he or she must roll two dices of the same number and the Zombie will be removed from the player field and moved back to the Zombie players hand and is ready to be placed back on the field again when the player starts his or hers round the next time.

Target group interpretation

In the easy mode the game rules was very simple and there was a clear strategy at least playing as the zombie team. While it is about zombies and one could think that it might not be fit for younger targets due to the scary theme it was done in a rather soft way similar to the Scooby Doo stylization. I also believe that younger people would enjoy the idea of playing as the zombie team rather than as in most board games play as one of the good guys but still against the enemy players. The box recommends the game to be played by players from the age of twelve and ages above that, and I do believe that the twelve year olds would appreciate this game. It is played pretty quick too which is very good for the younger players that might not have the patience to sit for several hours with a game, and the game mechanics is simpler than in other strategy board games where it takes a few rounds to be able to fully understand the rules and the mechanics and the strategies. But for the player that would rather prefer to play with his or hers friends in one team he or she is able to choose to play as a human champion and then it will fit his or hers wishes too.

Summation

This game is simple and easy to understand and even though it takes only 60 minutes to play one time with friends you understand it really fast. The esthetics of the game is very pretty and cute even though it is all about zombies and the worlds end. The game is very enjoyable since you will meet one of your friends as an enemy and this turns up the heat and competitive person in every one of the players. I do believe that the game is more fun and interesting if you are six players than if you are three players since there will be more complex strategies and rules and you will get to use all of the objects that the game contains.

That is all for now

Evelina Venngren