Episode 34 - Zombicide: Gear Up - It's More Satisfying When it's Hard

Welcome back and Happy New Year!

In this month's episode we delve into Zombicide: Gear Up, the flip and write spin-off from CMON's miniature heavy juggernaut Zombicide. This a light, easy to pick up co-op experience, but is it any good? And as always, how well does it work as a two player experience? Answers within.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Board With Each Other, the board gaming podcast that looks at board games and asks the question: how well does this play at two players? Whether that's with your significant other, a BFF, or your buddy for the apocalypse, who you're trying to kill time with until the next wave of zombies arrives. I'm joined as ever by my lovely wife and co-host, Hannah Kelly.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Hi guys.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

And today we are reviewing Zombicide Gear Up, the flip and right, quick and easy version of Zombicide. In ZombieSide Flip and Right, you take on the role of a zombie slaughtering character, and you have to defeat waves of zombies led by a boss by the magic of Tetris-shaped weapons, bullets, projectiles, stabbings? I don't know. All completely makes sense. How the game works is you take control of a character, and that character comes with four weapons, each colour-coded. On each of those weapons there is an associated geometric shape, so a number of squares, basically. You then have to deal with zombies that move through three street locations towards you, represented on the left side of your player mat, by uh flipping a card over, and that card will tell you which weapon you can use, which colour. You can then draw that weapon's hitboxes on the boxes on the zombie card. Once all the boxes on the zombie card are filled in, the zombie is dead. Yay!

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

You go through nine turns of that, so flipping a card. Um on the first two turns, you just flip a card, you use a weapon, and the card also signifies which zombies, of which there are two types, fast and slow, move. So if they move, they move down towards you. If they are on the third spot, they do damage. On the third turn, until the ninth turn, you also flip over a spawn card, which will tell you how many and what type of zombie, there are two, normal and special, to spawn in front of the players. Uh the numbers depending on the difficulty that you're playing.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

And the number of players.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

And the number of players. Once you have gone through that for those first nine turns of just playing old zombie, you reset everything and the boss comes into play. Same mechanism, but the boss swaps which player it is in front of each time, so that only that player, usually, there are exceptions through special rules, can damage the boss and be damaged by the boss. Just like before, once you've reached turn three, there are special boss cards which tell you what the boss does. So it might attack, it might use a special ability, or it may spawn more zombies. If you kill the boss, you win the game. If you are either players knocked out, taking up more damage than your health, you lose the game. And if you run out of time and the boss is still alive, you lose the game. Fairly simple.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

One thing worth mentioning: every time you get you kill a zombie, be it an elite zombie or a normal zombie or an elite zombie, you get to essentially level up one of your weapons.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yes, so there's two upgrade slots for each of your weapons, except for your special weapon, which comes fully upgraded. And each time you upgrade a weapon, they gain more abilities. The abilities are usually, most of the time, to do with crossing off either ammo or shield icons on the zombie cards. When you do so, you gain ammunition, which you can use to cause extra damage or activate weapon special abilities. When you gain shield icons, you get armor, which means you take damage on there before you take damage on your health.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

You also have long-range weapons.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Yes, one of the upgrades you can get is long-range weapons, which allows you to damage a zombie or boss that is in front of another player, which is very important when the boss phase comes around, because it allows you to take them down quicker. You can also cross off damage icons on the zombies' cards. They have base damage, but they also have additional damage within their hitboxes, and if you take those out, they do less damage if they if it comes to that. Very important when you're fighting the boss because the boss does a whopping amount of damage unless you hamper its abilities down a little bit before it starts attacking you. That is pretty much the all there is to it. That's the whole game, unless I you think I've missed anything.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

No, I think that's about it.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Run time.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

20 minutes, I'd say. Yeah, this is a fairly light and quick experience. So yeah, it's worth mentioning that neither of us have ever played actual zombie-side. Yeah, so I have no idea how it compares. Um, this is another one that I picked up randomly in the Game's Gone Mad sale of 2024. We've played a few sort of roll and writes and flip and write or whatever you want to call whatever category of writing on the on the boards is at this point. Um so we thought we'd give it a go.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Yeah. Okay, so shall we move on to scoring?

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yes, I think so. I think this is going to be a fairly shortish one compared to our usual main episodes, but more here than a bite size, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Okay. So first up we have components. So what's in the box? Um, what I will say about this is whilst the box is really, really small, oh my god, is it a table hog?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Yeah, I mean, not compared to some things, but it takes up a lot more room than you would expect, mainly because you have to lay out the nine turn cards, which are not massive, but they failed, they're coaster sized.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

So imagine lining nine coasters up and then another row of seven coasters, and then you've got your play and that's and the coaster sized zombie cards to the left of that.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

We've kind of mitigated that by almost stacking them up.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

When we tried to play it traveling, that's that's when it was an issue.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

So there is a way of making it smaller, but for a small box, quick and easy game, I think I was surprised at how much space there is.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I mean, I get it with the zombie cards because you need the space and it needs to be clear what you're crossing out. So it they are the right size, they're not too small, but you're not sort of struggling to see what you're crossing out and and therefore what damage you've done.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Do you think the artwork's really good? Yeah, no, fun, quite pop, pop start. That's not the word I'm looking for. Not pop.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

No, no, no, no. It's it's cartoony.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Yeah, it's cartoony. It's not sort of horrifying. I mean, we played this with our six-year-old and she had no issue with the artwork as such, it was all fine.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

But I think it's quite fun and it's quite engaging, like the colour scheme's really cool, quite like that. Um, I like the way that it looks.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Yes, it does look, it looks nice. The player sheets are really big and chunky, they look good, the artwork's good.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Um I will say though is that some of the iconography is a little bit confusing. Um, so on your character sheet with your upgrades, it's really handy because it will have all the iconography listed out there so you can see what it does. But quite often I do get confused between which one gives me an extra bullet, which one gives me an extra um yeah, and I do find that sometimes confusing, and I've made mistakes in the past because maybe that's just a me issue in which what we learn to read.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

I mean, I like a lot of things we play, the actual rule is also written on the card underneath it, so that's definitely a you issue there. Uh set up and tear down is an absolute double. Oh, yeah. Take seconds, really, really quick. And the cards in general are nice. Um, we've played it a fair bit, and I've not seen any issues with staining from the the marker pens or anything like that. Everything sort of brushes off really easily, really clear. Um the components are decent quality, like I'm I'm I'm I'm quite impressed for what it is, you know. It's it's good. Okay, so how did you score it?

SPEAKER_01 7:30

So I gave it a seven.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Uh I gave it an eight because I think components-wise, it's it's pretty good. Like it's it's I've got very, very little to hold against it.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Yeah, I've got very little to hold against it, but also there's not a huge amount to it. So I don't feel like giving it any higher than that would be a bit Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

I'm just judging it for what it is, and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

But yeah, no real complaints.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Alright, so then we are on to complexity, and as always, it's not about how complex a game is or isn't, but how well the complexity serves the gameplay.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Um, so I think this is really easy to teach and to learn. And one of the things that I will say about this is that there is no massive skill gap. So if you've played loads and loads of games, yeah, you're not going to be a massive advantage compared to anybody else.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Not necessarily, no, no. It's it's quite level playing field in that sense, which is nice for a co-op.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Yeah, I think it's really nice for a co-op, and I think because of that, it's got a really um good spot on the shelf in terms of um well. I'm racing ahead. But yeah, because of that, I think it does really well for me.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Yeah, I think uh again, you go back to the core of this category, it's about how well complexity serves the gameplay, and it's it's just it's as complex as it needs to be. You know, this is a light, uh, fairly you know, relaxed affair, and I don't think it needs much else. I the only point where I wish there was a little bit more to it would be around the bosses. I wish there was a few more mechanics of difference, I guess, with the bosses, and I wish there was a little bit more to them. They all have a special ability, but they are quite simple and quite sort of, you know, uh, it just does this extra damage because of this.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Or you have to do it in this order, or yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Um as a um as a somebody who's played a fair few board games, I feel that's a little bit lacking for me. I wish I I feel like they could have added maybe an extra rule per boss or something like that, just to make them a little bit more unique and a little bit more um exciting to play against. Um, so that is sort of a complexity thing for me. I think one of the things that you probably need to be aware of on the complexity scale for for the listeners as such is if you struggle with uh spatial visualization in any way. So imagining how if you wanted to sort of plan ahead, imagining how shapes would look on the grids, you know, in your head, this might be one to avoid. I just think that's worth flagging out because a lot of it is sort of trying to figure out oh, will I have space for this shape later on? And if your your brain is wired in a way that Tetris makes you want to punch a wall, yeah, it's probably definitely avoid.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

And I would say as well, there is a particular character that I will not pick because I find their shapes really complicated.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Think ahead with.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Yeah, um, and you have to be able to leave that sort of self, that kind of option open to to yourself in the future so you don't end up getting hemmed in and blocked in, completely wasting a turn. So, yes, I would agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Okay. So, on how'd you score on collection?

SPEAKER_01 10:41

So I gave it an eight because I think it's for for what it is and for where it's at, I think it's it's bang on, really.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Yeah, fair enough. I mean I gave it a seven, but I think uh the I was going to give it an eight, but uh the reason I went with a seven was because of that thing around the boss. I wish there was just a slight, slightly bit more to them. Um and I think it could have I think it could have had that without suffering much.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

All right. So then we are on to shelf life and value for money. So as always, how much does it retail for 12 pounds?

SPEAKER_00 11:12

About 12 pounds.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Really?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

See, I never know this before.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

I always like to surprise you with it.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

I'm going to revise my rating. Um, so I think that's really, really good value for money.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Oh, compared to some things you paid, like small box games that you pay more than that for. There's the the you know production values, etc. I imagine being CON they can sort of swallow, although not now, because they're in terrible trouble. Um this might date this podcast when we put it out. But it's it's a very low price point for what it is, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Yeah, and there is a lot of replayability with it. So you have, I'm gonna say like six, probably more than that, characters in the box.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, six characters in the box, I think.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Probably about the same again, bosses. Yeah. So actually, you do have a huge amount of variability.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

And what's also really cool about it, well, I'll split the same ideas in a minute.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

You also get um different difficulties that you can play on. So you can play easy, normal, hard.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

There's four difficulties.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Four different different difficulties. So again, if you've kind of got the basics down, you can then ramp that up so that you can, you know, keep playing over and over again. And I think for 13 quid.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

12, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Oh, 12.99.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Oh, I said 12.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Oh, okay, right, fine. Just ignore you. Just make it up in my head. Just make it up, it's fine. Um, I think that's that's really, really good value for money.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Yeah, I I fully agree. On the value for money front, I mean, this is absolutely worth punter that cost. It's it's it's it's very, very good value. Shelf life. I I think this is a good game. Uh we'll get onto it more with with fun, but in terms of shelf life and me wanting to come back to this and back to this, not so much.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

I I think once I've seen and killed all the bosses, which we've almost done, I'm probably gonna be like, oh, this'll be a very occasional thing. I'll go, oh, let's have a quick game with that.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

But I think um we'll come onto this in our two player ring um categories. This is more of a party type game.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

It's I don't think it is, but we'll get on to that later.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Okay, fine.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

I think this has another slot which we hardly ever talk about, but again, we'll talk about it in two player.

SPEAKER_01 13:27

All right, okay, fine. So, but I would agree with you. I think for us, we're pretty much there, we're kind of done with it. We've played it on all difficulties, we've seen pretty much all the bosses.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

We've played most of the characters, in fact, all of the characters we've probably done.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

But if you want to put a metric to it, we've got well over a pound an hour playtime. So, you know, I'm I'm cool with that. Um, I I think I think it is worth it for the money, but I I don't think it's one of those that's sort of you're gonna keep playing for years. And as a result, I gave it a six, and I think it's just slightly above average.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Yeah, so I revised my score based on the price point, and I also gave it a six.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

If there was more longevity, we would be talking in the nine of tens here, but I just don't I don't think the longevity for me is there. But as we are about to smoothly go on to Is it any fun? Yes, it is fun. I enjoy playing this. It's a bit of uh not turn your brain off, but it's actually quite a relaxing experience, I find.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Yeah, it is. There's no huge pressure. Um, you get to pick who takes the zombies. So if you're getting a bit swamped and you you you you're not doing all that well, then the other person can take it. So there is like a lot of give and take to it, which means that you never want a huge amount of pressure, which is nice.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Or you could just be really antagonistic and just refuse to take any zombies. I haven't tried that yet. I might try that in the Linux game. It's like, nope, nope, not doing it. Not doing it. Um it's killing zombies in the general act of playing is quite satisfying.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

The thing I didn't know about you, clearly what you find relaxing is con zombie apocalypse, you're gonna sit there out the window and shoot them off walking dead style.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Yeah, it's also like weird weapons that you know damage them in different ways.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Walking death style.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

So I do have a slight problem with this. Okay, go on. Um Is it the zombies?

SPEAKER_00 15:10

You're scared of zombies.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Well, not scared of zombies.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Yes, you are.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

I'm a bit scared of zombies. I was a bit of a doomsday prepper at one point in my life when I used to spend a lot of time thinking about zombies. That has now passed. Um, I used to never let my car get loaded on half-tack fuel in the case of a zombie apocalypse. True story.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Real life has just ground you down to the point that you don't care anymore. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

I welcome it. It happened, I swore to God that they were about to rise from it, the dead were going to rise from their graves, and it didn't happen, so it's now kind of ruined it for me.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

So the 5G killed them all.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Um but the way in which you play it is that um when you turn over the card and tells you what weapon you're picking, you then sit down and you silently mark it all off on your sheet.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

And we'll come on to this in the two-player rating scale, but I guess the lack of interactivity, I think, is a bit of a I've saved this for the category that it's for that we have for it.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

However, it is it is a valid point within fun because that that lack of interactivity is a downside on it. Yeah. And while I find it quite satisfying, it is a very, very solo experience, which I'll again get on to, I think, in a little little while. But yeah, I mean, in general, this is a quick 20-minute, rather satisfying, rather enjoyable experience for me.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Yeah, I mean, it's it's still fun and I still enjoy playing it. I just think that's the one bit that's lacking.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

That's really missing for you.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Yeah, but it's also what keeps it quick and snappy.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Yeah, yeah, I suppose, in a in a way, yeah. Um, so how did you score it for fun then?

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Six.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Yeah, I give a seven.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Yeah, okay, fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

I think it's good.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Okay, should we add those up?

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Yep. So we add up average and round, and that gives us a total of six point eight, which rounds to a seven.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Yeah, I think that's solid.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Yeah. Uh it's a good, it's it's a good game.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Yeah. No, I'm I'm happy with seven.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Okay, so should we move on to our two player categories? Yes. And first up, we have table talk and getting to know you.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

So, as I've always said, as I've already said, um, this is I guess one thing that lets the game down for me.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

You can quite happily probably play without talking to each other. Even when you have long range on your weapons, i.e., you can kill a zombie on someone else's map. I find that it very rarely do I use that to kill any trash zombies for you.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Oh, yeah, it's kind of pointless. You've got your own your own stuff going on.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Yeah. Um, so it just comes to when you hit the boss, and even then, I feel it doesn't really yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

It doesn't really create a huge amount of options for interactivity.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Absolutely, yeah. I think from a uh perspective of the co-ops that I've played, this has probably got the least amount of interactivity. And this sort of spreads over the the next category as well. Um there's just there's no reason to really consult with your with your partner.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

I mean, sometimes we do, particularly when a new boss comes out, we'll be like, oh, okay, so here what we need to do is this.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

But the plan is usually very, very obvious. Oh, you have to do this before you can do this. There's a there's a there's a rule to this boss, and it's obvious for everyone to see you read it, and then okay, fine, let's go. Um, yeah, it's not a game that promotes chat or banter or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

But on the other hand, it is really easy to play.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

And so if you wanted something, you know, that you could play whilst talking about, you know, no, no, I think it's a very snappy game, and I think the snappiness of it makes you just go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, let's get through it. There's not any downtime. So that's great, it's not any downtime, it's constantly engaging. And there's no you take a turn, I take a turn, everything's simultaneous. So because of that, it's just basically heads down playing this solo thing together. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's it if you want that interaction, you want that table talk, this is not the game for it, in my opinion, at all.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

No.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Um so as a result, I've given it a three.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah, so I've actually made it a lot higher than that, and I don't really know why.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

You're achieving that.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yes, but I think she scored at six, but I don't think that's right.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

No, it's definitely not above average in that sense, Hannah.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

So I'm gonna give it a four.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Okay. Alright. Okay, so I mean, I think that that leads us really neatly into uh how good a co-op it is.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

So I found this quite difficult to rate.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

I didn't. You know why. I think a lot of the the reasons we've just spoken about this very aside from the long range weapons thing, which allow you to you know damage. Opponent zombie once in a while and choosing what zombies who who takes which zombies and when. There's just that there's not there's not what I would expect from a cop in there. There's very little strategy involved. There's very little, oh let's let's talk tactics.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Um, which is what I like out of a cop, you know.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Yeah, I think there's very limited options for being able to help out your other players as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Um yeah, there is. There's not much you can do aside from the long-range weapon thing, there's pretty much nothing you can do to help them.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

But one of the things that I will say for it is there is also quite a minimal opportunity for quarterbacking. So going back to what I was saying, it's more kind of like playing field. Yeah. Um, and I think that particularly when you're talking about playing in a group setting, that's quite important.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Yeah, and you don't have that negative side to a cop of somebody obviously sort of letting the side down either. I think again, we've played this with our six-year-old, and it was absolutely fine.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

She got it, she understood the rules, and I think it was gentle enough that she didn't, she sort of just did her own thing, and that's absolutely fine.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

And we were able to just take the way you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

To a certain extent, I don't think we especially need to, as such. I think uh it's everybody sort of dealing with their own thing. But again, everybody dealing with their own space is not really what I want from a co-op. There's not that cooperative working together element so much.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Yeah, I mean, if I think about our earlier games, definitely there was a level of satisfaction when we beat the boss. Um, however, what I would say is the more that I've played it, the less that I the less satisfying it is. Less satisfying it is. It's now, oh, we won or oh we lost. Yeah. There's not that huge pull by.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Well, I suppose I should have mentioned this under fun, but we tried we we've tried three out of the four difficulties at two player. And there's not a huge amount of difference. I was expecting it to be more challenging, but we won off most with the one we tried on hard with with the ease now that we played it a few times. So there might be a little bit of a difficulty issue there as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

And you talk about this availability as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Yes, but also under co-op under the co-op rating, the co-op should be hard. And I think we've won most of our games with us.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

Should be hard.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

I think they I think they stay satisfying for longer when they're hard. I think it's like I'm gonna have to cut away for ten minutes after saying that, aren't I? Oh, that's the episode title.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

We're done.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Anyway. Phrasing. Are we doing phrasing? Yeah, and we're back. I did have to cut out there unless you wanted to listen to 10 minutes of Hannah laughing, which you can get through the director's cut if you send me an email. Um so anyway, back to how difficult co-ops are and how much enjoyable they are when they're difficult. Um I do think co-ops need a level of difficulty to have staying power. And I think this comes back to the um the shelf life aspect to me. Um I think if something if you win most of your games in a co-op, it's going to get old a lot quicker than when you win like 30% of your games. And I think that's held true for every co-op I played, really. So I think this does suffer a little bit in that sense at two players with uh with the difficulty. I think you'll crack it fairly quickly and it starts to become a bit too easy.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Okay, fair enough. So how did you rate it then?

SPEAKER_00 23:29

I gave it a four.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Yeah, so I was I was a bit on the fence um because I do think so. I think the reason I struggled to rate this was because um a lot of my issues around the cooperability nature of it are around that interactivity. I don't know if we talked about that. So hence why I think I find it difficult to rate. So I've kind of settled on a six.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Yeah, fine. Seems a bit high, given your issues with it.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Well, I didn't want to like score it down for the same thing twice.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

I okay, I guess, but they are very, very in interlinked, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

Yeah, they are very interlinked, and you know, you I I do feel like we are working together towards killing something together. It's just that we're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Together is just there because we're in the same room and the toping up with a plan. The plan is kill the zombies. Sort your own shit out. I saw my own shit out, and then we'll plan do you need? Okay, fine. Yeah, well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Kill the big fucking zombie.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Yeah, okay, yeah. Kill the big fucking zombie is also another episode title, but I think we found our episode title. Um, okay, fine. Shall we talk about scalability?

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Because I think this is an interesting This it is really interesting, isn't it? I've been thinking about this quite a lot. You go.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Okay. So this works, but let's get out of the way to start with. This works absolutely fabulously at two. Yeah. Like really, really works.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Except for it's not as much fun because it's not as hard for long.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

Yeah, enough. Leave it now. Um so works absolutely fine at two. Uh in fact, I'd say it's almost at its best at two. The only thing that I probably say it's better at is solo. I think that if you are a solo board gamer, this is a great thing to crack out to kill 20 minutes, because it essentially is a solo game that you play together. And I could absolutely, if you're the kind of person that if you want to kill some time and you play a hand of solitaire or something, this this would absolutely just to point out, they do have um one player variants of your heroes, so to speak, they've got like a separate size. Yeah, they have a different size. There's no rules changes as such when you play solo.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

I imagine you've just got more level ups.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

No, it's pretty much exactly the same. Um, I know there's some slight differences. Anyway, I think the only thing that it works better after than two is one. I don't think I'd ever say that about a game, but this this this this feels like a solo game to me.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

I think what really surprised me is when we went up.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Yeah, I was about to go on to that. I just wanted to get the solo thing out of the way. But you you go, you you so we have played this at three.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

And what absolutely shocked me was just how more difficult it was at three.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

To the point that it is nigh on unwinnable, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Well, I mean, to be fair, we only gave it one go, but Yeah, but it was it was horrendous. However, I've been thinking about this for quite some time. The difference when you then up your number of players is quite often, so your boss will sometimes they do do damage to every player, but more often than not, it will just do damage to the player that they're in front of. So the more players you have, the more watered down that is, and the longer you're staying power.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Yes, it is, that's true. And the boss is still the same boss that you'd have.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Yeah, with the same number of hits points.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Same number of hit points. The problem comes is the amount of zombies spawning, and people just get completely and utterly overwhelmed. That's right. And that's to do with so you have cards for every player count, and you have a number of zombies that spawn depending on your player count. And your difficulties. And your difficulties, obviously. But we were playing on easy, so we were playing on the the lowest option, and we were utterly overwhelmed almost immediately. So I feel like they've got the balance wrong there.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

We still want to test it a couple more times because again, there is an element of like luck to that as well.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

But that's not what we're about as a podcast. But I think you know, we're talking about how we're playing this at two. I think two is the best. Yeah. Well, not the best. I think solo is the best, personally. I think I think if you're a solo gamer, this is this is this is a ten um in this category. But for two, for two players, it works really, really well. Yeah. Like the balance is right. Might be a bit too easy for two. Again, maybe that's a balanced thing. Maybe they should have made two players a little bit harder and three a little bit easier. Maybe that's a play test balance thing.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

House rule it as well. Of course you want. I mean, it's cop.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

It's a cop, you can do what you like. There's no like rules judge standing over your shoulder going, play it this way.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

But I also think what's worth noting as well is that obviously in the the first round that you do when you don't have the the big boss in front of you, it is just spawning zombies. Yeah, right. So you do end up at a point where you do feel a little bit overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Not to the level.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

But when you have the big boss in front of you, the actual number of zombies that then spawn are fewer and fewer.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

No, they're so there is that balancing act as well. It's kind of an element of you need to upgrade all your equipment and survive, and then you just you know take down the big bots.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Yeah, fine. Okay. Uh but again, going back to the core of this, do you does it cry out for more players? Absolutely not. You've got more people, there's other things you can play there, much much more.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Especially if you want to play it without me.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

No, I don't play silver games. Um, but if you are if you are that way inclined, I think this would be an absolute banger.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Yeah. How do you rate it then?

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Um, I gave it a nine because there's not much bad to say about there's nothing wrong with it at all in two player, aside from it maybe being a little bit too easy.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Yeah, so eight, I gave it an eight.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's add those up. Okay, so that gives us a 5.6, which rounds out to a six.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

I think what's really interesting is it's like almost a game of two halves, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Yeah, absolutely. I think the the how well it plays at two is is carrying the load there. I think uh if you you want an interactive and a proper co-op experience, beware.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Um, but if you want a nice, easy, relaxing, turn your brain off a little bit, two-play experience where you know you perhaps you don't want to talk to the person you're playing with, then this is this is this is ideal. And I think just in general, I think for its low price point, it's great production values, and the decent amount of fun we've had with it, I I I recommend overall. I think this is a good one.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Okay. So thank you very much for joining us, and until next time, have fun, be good to each other, and play lots of more games.