Zombie 15' is the new real-time, cooperative zombie game by IELLO!
Can you survive the zombie horde?
Experience frantic 15-minute game sessions as you play a group of 2 to 4 teenagers running for their lives, while trying to discover the truth about the sudden outbreak that turned their parents, teachers and all of the other grown-ups into gruesome brain-eating monsters!
Close Captioning available by clicking on the CC button on the lower right corner of the video window.
The game is played in real-time, and begins at the start of the soundtrack. At your turn, you can take a total of 4 actions.
- If there are no zombies in your area, you can move: It takes one action to move to the next tile, or to go in or out of a building.
- When you are in a building with no zombies, you can take one action to Search for new weapons or equipment. A quick search lets you draw the 3 top cards of the Search, but that puts you at risk of accidentally stumbling on zombies. Alternatively, you can do a careful search, by looking one by one at the cards in the discard pile until you choose one to keep.
- Revealing and taking a scenario token from the board also takes one of your four actions.
- You can fight zombies in your area by decreasing the ammo (or durability for non-firearms) of a weapon, and removing as many zombie figures from the board as the damage value of the weapon. If you're using a noisy weapon, one of those zombies joins the Horde. You can fight multiple times if you like, but each attempt costs one of your four actions.
- Whether or not there are any zombies sharing your space, you can spend one action to use an item.
After spending your four actions, you must be able do fend off zombies around you with one of your weapons; if the Fend Off value of your weapon is lower than the number of zombies in your area, you lose a Life Point.
Every 60 seconds, a zombie growl can be heard in the soundtrack. Whenever you hear a growl, draw the top card on the Zombie pile to find out how many zombies you must add to the board on the street section of the active player's tile. If you draw a Horde card, add all of the (very hungry!) zombies from the Horde box to that tile!
Each scenario features different objectives: running through the city, pursuing a target, holding a fortified place, searching for useful resources… If you complete the objectives before the soundtrack is over, all of the players win the game. If you fail, or if at any time all of the heroes are unconscious, you all lose the game!
While other zombie games generally let you think calmly, discuss the problem, and plan through every situation, Zombie 15' simulates the stressful and frantic experience of being chased by zombies. The players have to act fast and think even faster. Cooperation and tactics are decisive, but so is keeping a cool head.
In addition, Zombie 15' features an immersive universe, with an original and compelling storyline and awesome heroes.
See for yourself with this actual play video: the game starts slowly, but the tension and pace are really rising as the minutes go by. You can activate the Close Captioning by clicking on the CC icon on the lower right corner of the video window.
- You get the game for less than its retail price ($70 instead of $79) and by doing so you make it even better for everybody!
- You will get the game before anybody else, so you can claim bragging rights!
In exchange we get to sell a great game with lots of extra content, for less than what we would have had to sell it for without your help ($79 instead of $99).
- 1. 8 Hero miniatures
- 2. 8 Hero sheets
- 3. 100 zombie miniatures — 33 cops, 33 secretaries, 33 thugs and 1 Alpha Zombie
- 4. 32 double-sided Terrain tiles
- 5. 33 Scenario cards
- 6. 56 Search cards
- 7. 18 Special Item cards
- 8. 48 Zombie cards
- 9. 25 Ammo/Durability tokens
- 10. 15 Life Point tokens
- 11. 40 Search tokens
- 12. Various tokens — Alarm, Car, Gas Can, Lock, Exit, -1 Action, A, B, C, D, Machine Gun, Ammo, Radio, Helicopter
- 13. 1 Horde box
- 14. 1 audio CD
- 15. 1 Survival Guide (rulebook)
- 16. “Death on Your Heels” (campaign book)
- 17. 5 additional scenarios (printed exclusively for KS backers - otherwise available as downloadable pdf files)
THE PUBLISHER
IELLO is an international board-game publisher founded in 2004 in Nancy, France, and established in the United States in 2012. We make fun, original games, with a focused emphasis on great artwork, high quality production, extensive replayability, and excellent value. Our catalog include worldwide award-winning hits such as King of Tokyo, Innovation and The Dwarf King. www.iellogames.com
THE DESIGNERS
Guillaume Lémery & Nicolas Schlewitz are two French gamers (and now designers) living in the Lyon area. They came up with the idea of Zombie 15' while playing a zombie video game. The development of Zombie 15' has certainly benefited from the hundreds of boardgames in their (impressive) personal collections. They posted a short video to tell you how they came up with the idea for this game!
THE ARTISTS
Heroes, zombies and cover — Biboun is a French artist living in Montpellier. He works mainly on character designs for video games, board games, anime and comics. www.biboun.com
Items — Alexey Yakovlev is a young Russian artist living in Yekaterinburg. His previous works include the arsenal and cover artwork for the boardgame Titanium Wars. kypcaht.deviantart.com
Terrain tiles — Anthony Wolff is a French artist/roughman/storyboarder working for video game/publishing & advertisement. www.waart.net
Icons — Igor Polouchine is a French artist, art director and game designer (Croak!). He works for Origames, a game design and graphics studio he co-founded in 2010.
THE COMPOSER
Eros Cartechini is an Italian soundtrack composer and arranger, with much of his work being used in video games. www.eroscartechini.com
Our US team will read all your comments and will answer as often and as soon as we can. We will also regularly compile all the new questions asked in the comments or questions section and answer them in the updates, for quick reference by everyone. We will also include those questions in the FAQ so that they are easy to find.
This Kickstarter campaign is only for the English version of the game. The purpose of this campaign is to pay for development costs (art, molds, soundtrack…) that are not language-dependent, which means that any version in other languages will include any extra content unlocked here. The French version will be produced and released at the same time as the English version, and we're already discussing other languages with our international partners.
Since we fully expect this Kickstarter project to be successful (and are determined to publish the game no matter what), we already asked our manufacturer to produce some of the components. The remainder will start as soon as the goal is reached (without even waiting for the project to end). We’ll be putting all additional bonus content into production as soon as that content is unlocked.
For those reasons, the game should be fully produced very soon after the project ends! Depending on shipping time to their location, we expect backers to start receiving their games in May 2014, a couple of weeks before the games hit friendly local game stores worldwide.
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Risks and challenges Learn about accountability on Kickstarter
Since this project is not meant to fund the production of the game (but instead to make the game better and less expensive by helping to cover the development costs), the risks here are very limited.
IELLO is an experienced publisher, and we absolutely know what we are doing when it comes to creating boardgames. Our games are recognized and renowned for their excellent value, and feedback for our customer service has always been extremely positive.
As for possible delays, production has already started, so we are confident that our backers will get their games in the Spring of this year. The production of additional components could hold back shipping a bit, but no more than a couple of weeks.
Our previous project, Guardians' Chronicles experienced some delays due to unexpected production challenges. We also made some last minute changes (adding in a stretch goal that wasn't met, and upgrading to engraved dice) that we decided to include after listening to our backers. Guardians' Chronicles is scheduled to arrive by the end of the first quarter of 2014.
FAQ
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Yes, the soundtrack includes the "zombie growls" that indicate when more zombies should be put on the board. It also provides timing for the duration of the game, and adds tension and excitement through the music and sound effects.
There are multiple versions of the soundtrack, and a lot happening at the same time on the board, so it isn't practical to play this game with hand timers.
We will be releasing downloadable MP3 files for you to play on your personal MP3 playing device.
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Each scenario is exactly 15 minutes of play time. It will take some time to set the scenario and the game board up, but actual play will be finished in 15 minutes. We know some people may only want to play one scenario, but we expect that many people will want to play through the scenarios one after the other. This means that play time might be one hour, or several hours, or even all night if that is what you'd like.
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We know that a lot of people have been avidly watching for this Kickstarter to launch (and so have we!). We wanted to thank the people who trust us enough to back us right from the start, and reward them a bit for their patience and diligence. And look how well it worked! We've launched, and our project is already a success before the Early Bird period was even over.
Thank you for trusting us, and for backing us so quickly! We know you are going to be very pleased!
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We wanted the game to be less expensive, which is exactly why we created this Kickstarter. We don't want to skimp on components, and wanted everything to be top notch and the best we could possibly make. But we all understand that higher quality means a higher price. There are several ways to reduce the price of a game (less quality, expansions, poor artwork), but we didn't want to do any of those things. Instead, we plan to be able to include a lot of extras, for less expense, and provide you with the best game possible at the best possible price.
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We have no intention of using Kickstarter to fund our future products. We only plan on doing this in the following two scenarios. When either we're working with a young publisher (like The Red Joker for Guardians' Chronicles), or when we want to make a very high development cost game less expensive by covering some of those development costs prior to the game actually hitting the streets.
Iello will continue to develop and produce our games in the traditional publishing model, which has been very successful.
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Our production and design managers did explore this idea, but we discovered that it made the final product less durable. We want our games to last a very long time, and to withstand the abuses that come with regular and frequent play. We design and publish games that we expect to get played a lot! While we understand the appeal of interlocking tiles, in the end, we decided that our current tile design will work best for this game.
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We expect the French version to be available in stores shortly after backers receive their games, with almost all of the same contents (including stretch goals). However, any new scenarios will be available as downloadable PDFs instead of printed sheets.
We are still working out the details with our partners for versions of Zombie 15' in other languages. We should have good news on the other languages in the next couple of weeks!
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This game is very demanding in terms of needing people to help keep everything flowing properly. We don't think solo play would work very well, since there is just so much to do. For instance, when it is your turn, you are playing as quickly as you can (moving your figure, drawing cards, killing zombies), and the other players get to help by adding zombies to the board, help with new and killed zombies, and doing some of the other pleasant chores associated with each turn. (If you had several additional appendages, it might just be possible to play by yourself, but isn't it more fun to face the zombie horde with your friends?)
Zombie 15' has been extensively play tested with 2, 3, and 4 players. We have been focused on making the game very challenging, but we are considering how it would impact play balance if there were more players. We'll continue to explore this idea, and will provide updates if we come up with anything during the campaign.
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All games that are shipped to backers from the EU will be shipped from France. This will mean no tariffs, fees, or taxes for EU backers. The rest of the games will be shipped from the US.
As already promised, we will charge $10 shipping for all games shipped outside of the US.
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We've designed Zombie 15' with lots of replayability. Each scenario is very different from the others, and offers unique challenges. After the first 4 "learning" scenarios, the rest of the scenarios present increasingly serious challenges, even for very experienced players. You can always play a specific scenario as a quick game, or pick and choose from a set of scenarios that interest you. You can also vary the challenge by choosing one of the 3 different difficulty levels, and with an alternate soundtrack with more growls. And finally, we will be creating new scenarios that will be available as downloads.
Zombie 15' is designed to be very flexible, and to match up with your game playing desires by allowing you to pick and choose what you'd like to play!
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If you'd like additional copies of Zombie 15', please pledge for an amount equal to the pledge level, times the number of copies you'd like. For instance, if you are pledging at the Sai Fon level ($65), and want three copies, please pledge $65x3=$195.
Shipping in the US is included in your pledge.
Shipping is $10 for international customers for the first copy, and $5 for each additional copy. So if you wanted three copies at the Sai Fon level, shipping outside of the US would be an additional $10+$5+$5=$20, so the total would be $195+$20=$215.
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The average size of the Hero miniatures is 33mm. Zombies will be 35mm tall, on average.
The terrain tiles are 5x5 inches, printed double sided, and 2mm thick. Every tile is numbered, and has an A and B side, so that you can quickly locate the tiles needed for a specific Scenario.
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We know that many of our backers also backed Guardians' Chronicles, and you might have some questions about what happened with that project.
Guardian's Chronicles was our first Kickstarter campaign. It was a tremendous learning experience for us. We've taken those lessons and we designed the campaign for Zombie 15' informed in part from what we learned from that first campaign.
Even though Guardian's Chronicles is running late, we think it is fair to say that the project has been a success, and that the backers are all going to be very pleased. First shipments to our backers are happening in the near future.
We have no intention of using Kickstarter campaigns as part of our regular process. Guardian's Chronicles and Zombie 15' are exceptions to our process, not the rule.
And we hope that you'll see how well this campaign goes, and be happy about the outcome!
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Publishing games can be a very complicated process, with many different layers and lots of moving parts to bring it all to completion. We have published a lot of games, but we haven't run a lot of Kickstarter campaigns.
We do know how to publish games, and how to meet deadlines. The fact that we are an international publisher means that we have to regularly meet deadlines so that we have our games ready for the big game conventions and shows around the world.
We set up our schedule with room to allow for all of the stretch goals. We knew that we couldn't know for sure how successful our campaign was going to be until we started it, and we allowed room in our schedule to still make our delivery date, even if some of the stretch goals weren't met until the very end of the campaign.
The fact that we've gotten off to such a good start, and that we've already passed 8 of the 13 announced stretch goals, means that we have been able to get started even earlier than we thought we would. We have already sent over the files to our factories for those 8 unlocked stretch goals. Right now, we're running early, not late. And we were very conservative about our timing and schedule for every milestone when we planned this delivery.
If something changes, we'll let you know. We have been in this business long enough to know that unforeseen events that are completely beyond our control might pop up, but we've done our professional best to plan all of this out, even planning as much as possible for the unforeseen.
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We are reading your comments very carefully, and taking your concerns and ideas into consideration.
We know that there is a lot of interest in Kickstarter exclusives, and that many backers are attracted to the idea of having something cool that nobody else can get.
We also know that many gamers are disappointed when there is no way for them to get the cool things that they'd like to have.
We made the decision to center the goal of this Kickstarter on making the coolest and most complete version of Zombie 15' that we could make. We've been open and honest about our intent to deliver this same game, with all of the stretch goals that we unlock, to everybody - and to not leave anybody out.
And we are going to stick with that goal.
As we've already hinted in the past, we are actively working on developing some items that one backer called "sweeteners".
We plan on using these sweeteners to thank the backers of this campaign, but these will not be exclusives, that would only ever be given to our Kickstarter backers.
We are extremely grateful and pleased that you have decided to join us in helping to make a better and less expensive version of Zombie 15'. We are confident that we're going to end up with an excellent product that will please our customers and our backers.
And we are working on some very cool "sweet" ways to say thanks to all of you!
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We have a lot of detailed plans about what we are going to do with Zombie 15' after this campaign. We know that everybody who buys this game will benefit from the things we've built with your help to make this a better game.
And we are going to create some very nice thank you gifts that we think will please you.
Yes, we will be using things that we create for this Kickstarter campaign in future marketing efforts. That is what we mean when we say we are not going to make any exclusives. The game itself, which is being improved with your help and the help of your fellow backers, is a result of this campaign.
For instance, we are going to print all of the bonus Scenarios that we unlock through our stretch goals, and we'll be shipping those hard copies of the unlocked bonus scenarios when we ship Zombie 15' to our backers. If we don't meet the stretch goals, we won't be printing those bonus Scenarios that are still locked. But this doesn't mean that only our Kickstarter backers are going to receive those unlocked campaigns. We've been open and forthright about our plans, and we are going to make the bonus Scenarios that get unlocked available for everybody to download.
Everybody benefits, just like everybody is going to get a much better version of Zombie 15'.
We think this is the best way to achieve our goals, and we sincerely hope you agree!
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One of our very enthusiastic backers, Alistair Lawrence, gets the credit for starting this "thing" he called a "sweetener". Blimey!
We set up this Kickstarter with carefully staged stretch goals, that would let us improve the game, step by step, and make it a much better game.
We knew from the beginning that we were going to think of cool, non-exclusive ways of thanking you, the backers of our campaign. And we've been actively working on the details of exactly what those sweeteners are going to be.
But we're not going to say anything more about these ideas until we are confident that we can deliver them to you. We don't want to offer you anything that we aren't sure we can deliver.
We can say, however, that our development team that is defining and locking down the sweeteners are all very excited about the ideas we are working on.
We'll post more information via updates, and on this part of our FAQ, as soon as we know for sure that we can deliver what we are working on.
Do zombies have a sweet tooth? Maybe not, but we think our campaign backers just might...
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Our development team has a list of things that we would love to add to make the entire Zombie 15' project even more exciting. We started by laying out our stretch goals so that we could deliver Zombie 15' as the game we wanted it to be, with lots of extras and a much better product, and a much better price.
This project has moved very quickly, and we've been putting together plans for additional stretch goals to make an even better Zombie 15' experience once we pass that last $100k stretch goal.
Some of these extra stretch goals were just twinkles in our developers' eyes just a short time ago, but now it looks like we are going to be able to bring them into the world to share with everybody!
And some of these stretch goals are being developed because we've been listening carefully to what our backers are saying.
Just as with our sweeteners, we do want to be sure we can deliver what we've promised.
We will share these new stretch goals with you as soon as we are confident that we can deliver them to you.
Stay tuned for more updates, and thank you for all of your support!
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The biggest benefit right now is that our backers are helping to make the final product better than it would be otherwise, and less expensive.
What this means is that your friendly local game store is going to have a better product, and it will be less expensive, which will help your FLGS sell more copies of Zombie 15'.
Can you get a better deal somewhere else? Yes, that's entirely possible. We set the MSRP - the Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price - but your local game store is free to price our games the way they see fit. We hope you can see the benefit of helping us make a better game, but if your decision is going to be based on whether or not you can save a little money by supporting your friendly local game store, we will completely understand.
This Kickstarter is not intended, in any way, to discourage our customers from supporting their Friendly Local Game Store.
We are putting together sweeteners for our backers, but none of those sweeteners are going to be exclusive to this campaign, and none of them will be game changers or have any direct impact on how you will play Zombie 15'. We do see the sweeteners as a benefit as well.
This sort of Kickstarter campaign may not be for everybody, but we have faith and confidence that our fans and our customers and our retailers are going to support us, and we are doing our best to please as many people as we can, and to make the best possible decisions.
We hope you'll join us, and we appreciate your confidence in IELLO and your support of this campaign. Thanks!
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This Kickstarter is only for the English version of the game. A few weeks after the game is shipped to our backers, it will be available in the US (in English) and in France (in French). EU backers will have their games shipped from the US to France, and then sent on within the EU.
We are meeting with many of our international partners at the Nuremberg Toy Fair to work out details of distribution of Zombie 15' in other languages and in other countries. Right now those details haven't been locked down, but we have a strong network of international partners who regularly distribute and localize our games, so we expect some good news after Nuremberg.
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We've had several people ask if the backs of the character cards could be printed with the character back stories we've been sharing as part of our updates.
The backs of the character cards are already printed with a beginning version of each character, which is used in the first few games to help the players learn the game.
The character back stories are not going to be printed, but we are going to have links to all of the back stories on our official Zombie 15' web site (and much more, too!).
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The Alpha Zombie giant monster is a "sweetener" that we're going to send to every backer of the Zombie 15' Kickstarter campaign who is receiving a copy of Zombie 15' as a reward. We will also be using the Alpha Zombie giant monster as a promotional item in the future.
There will be a "monster card" for the Alpha Zombie, just as there is for the other monsters, but the artwork wasn't ready at the time we announced this item as the first sweetener.
This monster will be compatible with King of Tokyo, as well as with the King of New York, which will be released a few months after Zombie 15'.
As with all of our promotional monsters, we are not going to publish evolution cards for this monster. We do encourage players to mix and match their evolution cards, and many players will draft the evolution cards so that they can pick what they'd like for their monsters.
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Yes. For example, if you buy three copies of Zombie 15', we are going to ship you those three games, as well as three copies of each of the other promotional items/sweeteners.
Keep in mind that in the US, shipping is included in the price, but for international backers, shipping for the first game is $10, and $5 each, for each additional game.
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What will Retailers get for backing this project? Is there anything else that retailers should know?
At the $200 Retailer level, we will ship you 6 copies of Zombie 15', as well as 6 copies of the promotional items we are making for this Kickstarter.
We will ship these games to your store at the same time we are shipping to all of the rest of the backers.
We are also working on promotional materials for your store, but we still need to work out the details.
Please send us a message when you pledge. We are going to ask you to send us information about your store, and then you'll be all set.
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We are developing a set of new promotional materials specifically for this campaign, and for the coming year.
We will not be reusing any of our older promotional materials for this campaign.
If you'd like to receive those older promotional materials (like the King of Tokyo promo card pack, or the Space Penguin), we would be happy to help set up an event and send materials to support that event. You could ask your Friendly Local Game Store, or convention event organizer to contact us about setting up an event at "organizedplay AT iellogames DOT com".
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"Fully Stocked" RETAILER PACKAGE. This bundle includes 6 copies of Zombie 15' and promotional materials at a retailer price, up to the value you pledge. This reward is ONLY AVAILABLE TO RETAILERS. For full details please privately message us.
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