About this project
Zombies, Run! The Board Game
£113,554
2,176
Prepare your 2-4 player team for a frantic, real-time sprint across a zombie-infested landscape! Rescue survivors, uncover secrets, and (hopefully!) find a cure.
With our app, you'll hear zombies approaching as you work together to escape them. You'll hear the voices of survivors and make snap decisions about who to trust – and who to stab in the back for a few first aid kits. But beware: they'll remember this!
You can start playing in seconds - and embark on a journey that's as quick as 30 minutes, or as epic as 30 hours.
Kickstarter is our home - it's where Zombies, Run! was born in 2011! The game is by Matt Wieteska (ZR Audio Director, Radio Abel writer), Adrian Hon (ZR Lead Designer), Alex Macmillan (ZR Developer), and illustrated by Kas Sweeney.
Our game map is full of survivors to rescue, secrets to reveal, and zombies to evade! You move across the map by selecting destinations on our app, which constructs a dynamic real-time adventure for you to run through.
When you're out on a run, our app means you'll hear approaching zombies, as well as survivors who might be out to help or harm you. Decide how to respond fast, because your choices will have lasting consequences!
When you hear 'One Zombie detected', add a zombie at A. When you hear 'Zombies advancing' move all zombies one step towards E. And when they get to the end... well, it's not pretty.
You can evade zombies by taking advantage of opportunities to Run, Talk, Think, or Sneak. Chain Opportunity Cards together (like dominoes!) to form a Plan. With a long enough Plan that ends in the right opportunity, you can evade the zombie!
You can also use weapons like Baseball Bats, Pistols, Axes, Fuel Cans and more to kill zoms - these require different combinations of Opportunity Cards to fire and reload.
You'll often have several zombies on your tail, so communication with your fellow Runners is vital – especially when you encounter tougher zombies that require multiple Plans to evade!
Living, Persistent World: Your decisions really matter, because the app remembers your choices. Whether you befriend or betray someone, it'll have consequences. The world changes even without your input, as zombie hordes roam across the map, settlements rise and fall, and the end of humanity moves ever closer.
Environmental Puzzles: While searching for vital supplies, your radio picks up a garbled transmission. A voice cries out for help, lost in the wilderness. The only landmarks are smoke to the north and the sound of water to the south-east. Can you triangulate their position and find them before it’s too late?
Audio Adventure: Board games are about having fun with your friends, not staring at screens! That's why we keep your eyes off the app, and instead we fill your room with fantastic award-winning audio.
Expandable: Our game can sustain multiple playthroughs, thanks to its branching storyline and massive open world. As with Zombies, Run!, our app gives us the ability to to add new stories, new characters, new zombies, and new maps in the future!
Story by Matt Wieteska, with Naomi Alderman (ZR lead writer and co-creator) contributing writing.
Guest writers include Joanne Harris (Chocolat, The Gospel of Loki), Ben Monroe (All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Cthulhu Wars), Andrea Philips (ReMade, Revision), Cassandra Khaw (The Verge, Hammers on Bone), Rebecca Levene (Zombies, Run!, Smiler's Fair).
The Party Pack adds over 100 cards that turn our game into the ultimate zombie-escaping Party experience:
- A whole extra set of 96 Opportunity Cards
- 12 After Dark Zombie Cards
- 24 Versus Mode Cards
It lets you play VERSUS MODE against another group of 2-4 runners, trading blows and zombies in real time as you battle to be the last team standing. The Party Pack also adds AFTER DARK ZOMBIES that can only be slain by telling secrets, dancing, and downing shots!
The Runner 5 is our most premium edition, including:
- Runner and multiple Zombie miniature figures, so you can live out your wartime strategy 'pushing-things-around-a-map' fantasies
- Extra artefacts that bring the story and world to life, including postcards from characters, newspaper clippings, unique puzzles, and more!
Risks and challenges
The board game itself will be straightforward to manufacture as it doesn't contain any super-complex items, and we have plenty of experience in shipping goods worldwide. As for our app, we already have a beta version up and running on Android so we don't anticipate any problems at all with development. In fact, our original Zombies, Run! app launched on time, a mere six months after funding on Kickstarter!
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Funding period
- (30 days)