Carnival Zombie - They won´t stay dead... but the game might.
A review by Christian
I don´t think that games should be reviewed after only one play. But in this case there is a reason, which I´m going to give you in the end (oh, the tension).
Carnival Zombie - a play in four acts - with a surprise ending (of sorts)
Prologue: Enter Tom Vasel
My story with Carnival Zombie starts with Miami Dice. Tom Vasel and Sam Healey praised, as they would say, "the heck out" of this game and since I thought the art and the concept were really interesting, I picked the game up as soon as I found it. Not really liking pure slash-and-burn Zombie games, I thought I´d give this a go with its intriguing mix of Euro-Ameritrash appeal, co-op gameplay, Dexterity and RPG elements, and lots of theme.
Act I: Enter Rule Book
I usually read through the rules casually before I really get into a mock turn or two with myself to see how things work. The rule book encouraged me to do so, because it states (twice!!) that only a few general rules have to be remembered and that learning the game was actually simple. Simple? Wow, if this is simple, I am scared to imagine what complicated must be in Matteo Santo´s eyes...
Anyway, three attempts on separate occasions later (with a perceived duration of 10 hours each) of fighting paper instead of zombies I had a rough sense of how the game played. It seemed pretty cool to me and the first two solo turns were actually quite promising. However, I must really say I haven´t yet found a rule book written so inconsistently and weirdly structured than this one (sorry, Matteo). I can only refer to the English version, of course. But my Italian friend read the Italian ones beforehand, and it didn´t seem as if he had much more of a grip of things than I did. My head is still spinning from unclear wordings that got lost in translation, a lost Italian sentence or two in mid-air, reference numbers without the corresponding item, scattered rules and sub-rules... Sorry to say it - but even though I can see and appreciate the game designer´s work very much - a rule book like this will really throw people off, which is a shame, especially when the game is actually good. Game Designers - if you write your rule book yourself, please let some people actually try learning the game from that book and see if they can manage.
So, Act II - Enter gamers
We got together at game night, 5 guys, high expectations (all had seen the Vasel Video), and some real absinth as backup, in case the respective equipment card got exhausted. Venetian carneval 2014 - check. One of the gamers Italian - check. Carneval mask positioned between candles - check. Thematic music - check. The stage was set for a glorious adventure fighting the undead! Or sleep...
Enter rule book ... never to leave again.
What can I say. I thought I had a grip of the mechanics and turn structure. But, boy, was I wrong. We felt like we had set out to steer a shiny Venetian gondola without any knowledge of the canals, brooding over an oversized tourist map. We were doing what we could... and after the first two rounds we knew that we had done it wrong. Restart.
Act III: The game unfolds - Enter fun... and exit again.
I´ll spare you the details, but we did it! We actually won the game (without cheating). But it took us 6 hours straight to get through it. And to be fair, we DID have a fair amount of fun. It´s brain tickling, it´s thematic, it´s exciting to drop the dead undead on the pile of corpses. It really does feel like you are fighting hordes of zombies. But gameplay never really picked up. Ok, it´s a lot to expect from a first game - but it just never really showed signs of "the Flow". It´s also a very puzzly game, which is great, but slows it down even more. The mechanics of the game itself are not all that complicated, but it still feels like you are playing "Rule Book, the Game".
Act IV: The grand finale (well, maybe not so grand)
Hurray, our characters made it out of the city - we got to the harbour where our boat was towed. We jumped on board and... read some rules. And some more rules.
By the time we started playing the end game, only two of us actually still cared. I had long passed the rule book on to my brother, who got just as frustrated as me. I had read on the Geek that the boat finale was a bit strange. And it was. Nice idea, but boooring. We were actually glad once it was over and could move on to something that felt like fun. Like Coup. Or anything, really.
Epilogue: What a shame. Exit game.
Carnival Zombie is a solid, fine game with a lot of heart poured into its making (I think) and a unique approach to the theme, which I really like. The GAME is not the issue here - it´s the obstacles that you have to overcome before you play. Maybe the point was to actually make players climb obstacles and barricades in real life. It felt like so much work! We did have fun, but it was in no relation to the amount of frustration that we got yourself into on the way. Even the absinth didn´t really help... much.
So - it´s a real shame. I like the game! Most of us did in one way or another. It´s cool, arty, puzzly, pretty hard even on Easy mode, offers tension, a tight ending, features an act structure and various end game scenarios - fantastic - but:
It will have a hard time hitting the table ever again. And if it really does, I am pretty sure I will have forgotten all those 3000 rules. And that would mean... Aaaaahhhhh!
Exit fun. Enter horror.
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