Last Night on the Earth: The Zombie Game

Zombies have never received so much attention as they did in the past few years. Anything with zombies sells - doesn't matter if it's a computer game or a mod, a film or a book, zombies are popular and that's that. How lucky were the guys from Flying Frog Production that they based their first game on geek-favourite genre of gory zombie films, their game sold so well they've became a quite successful production company releasing a game every one or two years with a distinct style typical for all their games.

I bought the game along with its large expansion on a whim. I had money and wanted an impressive board game, zombies sounded good and the reviews weren't bad. So yeah, why not. And I must say I was quite pleased with what I got.


The game is primarily aimed at the people who know the zombie genre well as it references the many clichés and stereotypes of the horror movies. Player split into two groups - those who will play as heroes and those who will play as zombies. Heroes are your typical bunch of slasher-horror film characters: the prom queen, the sheriff and his son, the priest, the school jock, the farm girl, the nurse, etc. Every character comes has a special characteristic, that makes him unique, 2 to 4 hitpoints and some adjectives that respond to some character-specific events in the game.

the board at the start of a game

At the start of every game, the players choose a scenario with different goals that plays like a zombie movie - survive till dawn, find a can of gasoline and keys to escape in a truck, hold out in a mansion, and many more. The Heroes usually have a number of turns in which they must complete the goal, else they lose and the Zombies win. Then the game plan is build from four random town pieces and one centrepiece, the Heroes are put in their position and starting Zombies as well. There are two decks of cards, one for Heroes, one for Zombies. While Heroes must search for their items in buildings and draw their cards at the expense of performing another action, Zombies refill their hands at the end of their turn automatically. Having cards in hand is crucial for the Heroes, as they can be both items which are automatically equipped by the characters, or events some of which must be played immediately, some might be saved for later. While weapons increase the probability of succeeding in combat, events can help with dice re-rolls, further movement or other things that help the Heroes in survival. Zombies only have event cards (one of the expansions brings zombie items too) but they make up for it in their number.

survivors cornered in a library

Both teams take turns, Zombies start and during their turn they can move and attack and finally they spawn in the spawn points. Heroes can move and take an action which is either searching for something, using something or shooting a zombie, then they can engage in close combat. Searching is vital to heroes as they usually don't get cards otherwise but they should not forget to kill zombies too as their number gradually grows and they could find themselves in a dangerous situation easily with many zombies around.

Combat is one of the main features of the game but it's somewhat clunky. I can see the reasons why it's as it is, the designers needed to empower slow shambling Zombies so that they would have chance against the gun wielding Heroes but it's the most confusing part of the rules. I'm sorry, I can't describe it without looking into the rulebook, but to be honest, with paying enough attention to the text, it can be grasped. The main problem is in the division of the Zombie-initiated combat and the Hero-initiated combat, that's all I can say.

game art

I saved the best part of the game for the end - the looks. The game has a very stylish graphic design, all the cards have pictures, professionally taken photos of actors/models and then ran through a graphic software to create this... strange but awesome sort-of-comics/painted look. The models' facial expressions are well-acted, especially on combat event cards. The make up of the zombies is exceptionally well done and the same can be said about the setting and lightning. The same graphical style is used in a sort of a spiritual successor of the game - A Touch of Evil - and has since become a trademark of the Flying Frog company.

Speaking about the looks, I can't not mention the plastic figures of the zombies and the heroes. They are well done, I can't complain about them. Zombies come in two colours for the two-player Zombie co-op game and they have several different poses. The heroes themselves are grey, ready to be painted, each posed in a characteristic posture you'd expect from their stereotype. Having such personalized figures helps you to immerse yourself in the game's atmosphere. Really, they are better than cardboard cutouts or tokens. Of which there are about three tons - there are cardboard cutouts of certain elements used for certain scenarios (fire, radioactive ooze, truck, altar) and some more often used ones (overrun building tokens, lights out tokens, locked door tokens, wound tokens, tokens, tokens, TOKENS...) but some are just put in as supplements for players' custom-created campaigns. On one hand it is a nice gesture, on the other hand it's annoying and messy to store them. And I shouldn't forget mentioning that some editions include original soundtrack, which honestly is kinda plain but it's a nice atmosphere setting nonsense :)

So yeah, this game is fun. Especially if you have friends who enjoy this kind of thing (i.e. zombies). The game takes about an hour and half to finish so it doesn't drag on for too long and stays enjoyable throughout.

PS: The expansion I have, Growing Hunger, added new rules to strengthen zombies, special zombies, new buildings in the town, some new cards and new heroes. It supposedly balances the game better and I can't state otherwise.

nurse Becky