If you are anything like me, you are approaching the level of burnout with zombie themed games. From board games to video games to comics and TV, zombies are literally everywhere. There are several co-op board games featuring zombies, including three we have already covered in this column: Zombies Keep Out!, Dead Panic, and Zombicide. What does Dead of Winter offer that these other zombie co-ops cannot?
It’s a tough question, but I believe the best answer is a compelling narrative. In the three games mentioned above, most every scenario plays out the same way. Players team up to fight off the advancing undead, and as they do, the intensity ramps up until one of two things happen: they win, or they lose. Dead of Winter adds in a wrinkle on top of that basic formula that adds a sense of drama and agonizing decision making that other games lack.
This wrinkle comes in the form of secret objectives. Each player is dealt a card that details their own unique victory condition. This victory condition is in addition to the overall goal that all players must reach together. Initially, my thought was that these secret goals would detract from the sense of cooperation, and I suppose in some sense, they do. However, they add so much depth to the experience that the game is much better as a result.
In my first game, the shared objective was fairly straightforward. It was called Raiding Party, and required the survivors to deplete the search decks at two different locations in the game. This seemed straightforward enough. The secret personal objective I had been dealt was “Burn It All Down”. This meant I would only truly win the game if we had collectively built four barricades and I had a can of gasoline in hand.
Aside from the narrative implications of being an arsonist, the secret objective had a great effect on my decision making throughout the game. The main objective led us to collectively focus on two locations throughout the game in order to get through those search decks in time. However, I felt compelled to visit the Gas Station, where I could stockpile gas cans for my secret win condition. When we found a snowmobile that allowed moving from place to place without the threat of being attacked by zombies, that was great news. Except for the fact that it required gasoline to operate. It forced me to choose between what was best for the group (fill up that snowmobile as often as possible) against my own “need” to hoard a can of gas.
That sounds interesting enough, right? But remember that each other player also has a secret objective. They are facing the same sort of agonizing choices that I am. But I can only speculate as to what those objectives might be. It breeds just enough dissonance into the game to make it compelling. No longer are you bored when it isn’t your turn. You are constantly looking for clues as to the reasons behind the other players’ behavior. The secret objectives also nicely solve the “alpha player” problem that many co-ops have, where one experienced and/or noisy player decides what everyone’s best actions should be. In Dead of Winter, what may be best for the group is often overlooked in favor of the personal goal, and the “alpha player” can’t get upset over such play when they, too, are working towards their own benefit from time to time.
Choosing between the needs of the many and the needs of the few adds so much to the game, but the decision making goes further than that. In between rounds of play, you draw from the Crisis deck. This draw usually gives players a choice of two options. They can either meet the conditions of the card for a minor benefit, or ignore the card and take a consequence. An example might be to take in a group of starving kids and gain morale (a sort of sliding scale that cannot reach zero), or leave them to their own devices and lose morale. Of course, taking the kids in means more mouths to feed later, so the cost is not inconsequential. One that came up when I was collecting gas cans was a cold spell Crisis card that required us to burn gas to avoid losing lives. It was hard to pony up the last gas can in hand that round, for sure.
I’ve deliberately left out many of the details about the actual mechanics of Dead of Winter. Quite simply, there are so many interacting systems that it would be hard to summarize them. Suffice it to say that you will be managing multiple characters and their different special abilities, risking a one in twelve chance of instant death when moving from place to place due to zombie bites, and using various items, weapons, and equipment you find throughout the game to survive. Or, at least, to meet the victory condition that all players share.
So what can you do when another player seems to be focusing too much on their secret objective and not pitching in to meet the shared goal? You can call for a vote to exile that player. Again, you might think this seems uncooperative, but in practice, the threat of exile keeps everyone working together, even if it’s just to throw off suspicion. If a player is exiled, they still play the game, and are given another win condition, so they still remain involved in the experience.
Though I cannot say I would recommend it, there is a fully cooperative variant included in Dead of Winter. Simply don’t draw secret objectives, but use the “hard mode” side of the shared objective that you choose for your game. I am certain that Dead of Winter would be better than most co-ops when played in this way, but you really lose much of the experience by not having those delicious secret objectives in there.
Dead of Winter is easily the best zombie themed board game I’ve played, and one of the best co-op games, as well. It is highly thematic, has great production values, and features some of the most compelling decision making points I’ve ever seen in a board game. There is a high amount of replayability due to the interactions between shared and hidden goals. While it isn’t a pure co-op, the teamwork aspects are undeniably strong. Playing Dead of Winter feels like you are experiencing an episode of your favorite zombie TV show or movie. If you aren’t totally burned out on zombies, you should give it a try. Just watch out for the guy hoarding gas cans.