Announcing ZED, the new zombie CCG!

[europeanmatt]

ZED is a new CCG I have designed that I'm hoping to launch on Lackeyccg in the next couple of months. The theme is zombie survival.

Players control a small group of survivors, including a leader that represents the player in the game. Each round, a number of zombies will spawn in the dead zone, slowly shambling toward your safe house. If you allow your safe house to get surrounded, the zombies may break through and eat you while you sleep.

So make sure your survivors are well armed and equipped. They may need training to ensure they have the skills and mindset necessary to stay alive, and stay sane.

Like any good zombie apocalypse, it's not just the undead you have to worry about. Rival groups of survivors vie for control of weapons, supplies and other resources. If a rival crew kills your leader, it's game over.

Two key mechanics in this new game are the resource sytem and the zombie spawning.

Each survivor comes into play with a number of morale counters equal to his printed morale value. These counters can be spent to play other cards (equipment, weapons, events etc.), but also act as a life total for individual survivors. If a survivor with no morale is attacked by a zombie, he or she will become infected. Each turn, you refresh your survivors by adding a single morale counter to each.

A number of zombies will spawn in the dead zone each turn - these zombies are face down cards from your draw deck, and have fixed stats. Save for your three card opening hand, you never draw any cards. Instead, you earn cards by killing zombies. A dead zombie is flipped face up and you have the chance to play that card immediately for its printed morale cost. If you decide not to do so, you may put it in your hand. Cards played from your hand cost one more morale than usual.

That's the teaser... I will be posting the complete rules here later this week. Comments, questions, suggestions?

I understand that there have been attempts at producing zombie CCGs in the past, but i haven't been able to find much information about them. If anyone can point me in the right direction or pass on any wisdom I would appreciate it.

ZED is copyright 2010 Matthew Barker.

[eloooooooi]

I've been looking for a good zombie card game for a while now. I think this may be the end of my quest.

Please, tell me more! I'm very excited right now

[Madmartigan]

Mhhh... I'm far from knowing CCGs enough that I can tell what works and what don't, so it's just a first reaction...

The idea of never drawing a card seems a little self-defeating, if you know what I mean... Honestly, why should anyone bother to put a very dangerous zombie, even one with a big reward, in its "zombie" deck if there's the risk he will come in first and eat your brain out (or at least leave you almost defenceless for next wave).

So without more information, I can't understand how the game is balanced between putting card into play and keeping the zombie menace away. When you draw a card that you have no use for in your current situation, in most CCG, this can be counterbalanced by having other cards in play that allow you to draw more cards or reuse cards, etc, etc... In here, if we are talking "absolutely no direct draw", the only way I can imagine that game to work is to have "strategic" options, almost always available (somewhat like "bleed" or "hunt" in VTES).

I'm not sceptical, but I must say I'm not convinced either for now.

[europeanmatt]

Good points, Madmartigan. I welcome any criticism - that's what this community is for IMO. To address your concerns real quick...

* The big bad zombies are played against your opponent.
* Cards can be discarded (at a cost) to refresh the morale of your survivors.

[Madmartigan]

Mhhh... Ok, now my curiosity is stinged AND the game mechanic seems clever enough to have me giggling and asking for more braiiiiiiins.

Kinda curious about what kind of art (if any) and fluff we're talking about though. I'll definitely follow this thread closely from now on. 

[reelhotgames]

I agree that there needs to be a draw mechanic of some sort, even if it's moral based, drop a moral point to draw a card, essentially weakening your survivors in order to perhaps arm them more, find food or resources etc...

But thus far I think this has merit, curious how the zones and "movement" works, look forward to seeing / hearing more. Cheers.

[Ripplez]

what kind of cards will there be? not card types but more like, how will you design stuff? there will be permanents i assume but what kind of zones? do you think youll treat zombies as creatures or will you have like zombie types and subtypes?

and also, who plays the zombies if your playing the survivors?

[Howl]

euro matt im up for any help if you need it heh . oh and srry heh i havent been on skype in 4ever but yeah juss mssg me whenev u need  something if u want to lol totally up to you.

[Trevor]

ZED is a new CCG I have designed that I'm hoping to launch on Lackeyccg in the next couple of months. The theme is zombie survival.

Players control a small group of survivors, including a leader that represents the player in the game. Each round, a number of zombies will spawn in the dead zone, slowly shambling toward your safe house. If you allow your safe house to get surrounded, the zombies may break through and eat you while you sleep.

So make sure your survivors are well armed and equipped. They may need training to ensure they have the skills and mindset necessary to stay alive, and stay sane.

Like any good zombie apocalypse, it's not just the undead you have to worry about. Rival groups of survivors vie for control of weapons, supplies and other resources. If a rival crew kills your leader, it's game over.

Two key mechanics in this new game are the resource sytem and the zombie spawning.

Each survivor comes into play with a number of morale counters equal to his printed morale value. These counters can be spent to play other cards (equipment, weapons, events etc.), but also act as a life total for individual survivors. If a survivor with no morale is attacked by a zombie, he or she will become infected. Each turn, you refresh your survivors by adding a single morale counter to each.

A number of zombies will spawn in the dead zone each turn - these zombies are face down cards from your draw deck, and have fixed stats. Save for your three card opening hand, you never draw any cards. Instead, you earn cards by killing zombies. A dead zombie is flipped face up and you have the chance to play that card immediately for its printed morale cost. If you decide not to do so, you may put it in your hand. Cards played from your hand cost one more morale than usual.

That's the teaser... I will be posting the complete rules here later this week. Comments, questions, suggestions?

I understand that there have been attempts at producing zombie CCGs in the past, but i haven't been able to find much information about them. If anyone can point me in the right direction or pass on any wisdom I would appreciate it.

ZED is copyright 2010 Matthew Barker.

Interesting idea and it sounds fun, but I caution again a specific concept of a group of people in one location that gets swarmed by zombies. This is a common theme in zombie movies, but a lot of other things happen, like venturing out to save a loved one, going to find a cure, running from place to place, or whatever. Don't restrict the "plot" of the game to just a hide in one place and survive thing.

Your theme seems cool, but your stated mechanics seem clunky. Test it out, and keep asking yourself if it seems like the most fun way to do things.

It seems like there are many random seeming elements in zombie movies, like who you meet (often perfect strangers), where you go, what weapons you have at your disposal, and things you find you need to do. That model fits perfectly with a deck of random cards. Every turn you should draw maybe 1 card, and that represents one of those random things being available to you.

[Trevor]

I think one thing you need to decide is how the good guys/bad guys work. There are 3 ways to go about this.

1. Have one player be the zombies and one player play the good guys.

2. Have each player come with 2 decks: one with zombie cards and one with good guy cards.

3. Have a player play a single deck with half good guy and half bad guy cards. Decipher's Lord of the Rings does this.

[Madmartigan]

I agree with Trevor's suggestion of a "plot/event" deck. I was kinda waiting to know more about this game before talking about it, but it's the kind of thing that strikes me as very attractive. For example, to encourage multiplayer games : one event where the teams meet up by accident while scavenging and that allow them to trade the things they have before going their separate way. The best kind which I can imagine would be something such as the "A Game of Throne" Plot Deck : players select a number (7 in AGOT) of "plot cards", one will be chosen by them at the beginning of each turn, hopefully, if they have chosen wisely, it will give them an edge on their counterparts.

[europeanmatt]

Cheers for the feedback guys. Please keep it coming, it's a great motivator.

Howl, nice offer, I'm open to any suggestions you have. If you would like to do some non-lackey playtesting, I'll send you the card file to print out as soon as I have it in decent shape. Same goes for anyone else.

eloooooooi, Ripplez, Trevor et al., I look forward to hearing what you think of the attached rules. This is version 0.2, coming after much discussion of 0.1 and half a dozen play test games with close friends. A game developer friend is also playtesting separately with international friends online - for all I know, you might be one of those people.

At this point the general shape of the game is there, but all of the rules are open to tweaking, extension and diminution. For example I intend to implement a couple more card types - "Enchantment" style permanents, objectives that earn you a bonus for completion (e.g. rescue mission) etc. - but it remains to be decided in what form.

I have decided to abandon the "discard deadweight cards for morale" rule for now, but it may come back in an amended form. I don't want it to allow ProsBloom-style combo engines.

Next up is completing the first draft of the cards - there are only about 100 so far, loosely templated - and playing a lot of tests. I hope to preview a couple of cards next week. There's a couple of people helping design card frames, logos, etc. and I've secured some placeholder art from deviants.

Does anyone have an opinion on whether photographic or painted art would work best in a game like this? Would it work to have photos on some cards and paint on others?

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[Trevor]

Here's my suggestions for core mechanics.

Kinds of cards----
Player cards, cards that represent you.
Ally cards: cards that represent people you are working with
Item cards: with subtypes like weapon - shotgun
Event cards: represents 1 time actions like "Unwanted Attention"
Condition cards: represent ongoing effects, like "Night time"
Zombie cards, special zombies

My resource idea is to have the back of every card be a standard "vanilla" zombie. Each turn, you can play one card from your hand face down as a zombie. On your turn, you play as surivors and use spend (turn/tap) zombies as a resource to play helpful things, like allies and weapons. On their turn, you attack their survivors both with your generic zombies and additional Zombie cards and abilities. You never get a kind of mana screw like Magic has because you can play any card as a face down generic Zombie. But some of these generic face down zombies, when you pay some additional cost, can surprise your opponent as they turn into more powerful zombies (some with flip face up abilities).

So you alternate turns, with each turn you have to deal with more and more zombies. And more and more powerful abilities as you develop more resources.

[Trevor]

I Think a morale mechanic is lame. It's about surviving, not how you feel.

There are all kinds of portrayals of zombies. There are cute zombies, like in Plants VS Zombies. And at the other end of the spectrum is photorealistic horror zombies intended to scare you. I think for a card game you would want to go the middle road which is more of the pulp fiction portrayal of zombies, which can be scary at times and comedically tongue in cheek at other times.

Try to make some cards, particularly action cards, useful both when you are playing a survivor or as the zombies. Here are 2 examples:

Brutal Attack!
Make a character power+4 until end of turn.

Improvised Weapon
Choose one: Exert a survivor to return a weapon from your discard pile to your hand; or Exert a zombie to discard a weapon. 

[Ripplez]

soory european but i just never got the thematic justification for playing both the good and bad side. its just beyond me

how you feel is a very importnt part of any survival thing. even if your crashed on an island or lost in the desert or something, if you feel down, your already dead. confidence, reasonble optimism and things are crucial to survive otherwise when the questions - ".... is this going to help at all? am i going to die?" - inevitably pop up, you can say to yourself the answer is no. if not, people can just switch off and collapse, physically or mentally

that said, id advocate against having a morale mechanic that invovles discarding. not just because its exploitable and alot of the ways against it involving tinkerign with the rules/mechanics in a serious way but because this gives the impression that your punishing the player for wanting to play. raising their morale seems like something that they really should do and cant really avoid doing in a reasonable setting where they want to live but that just means the discard becomes mandatory. my advice would be either balance it out (for eg do a cthulu lcg and draw more than 1 card a turn to balance out losses to discards), have your discarded cards still contribute in a way as a resource or for effects or something or do somethng to make the act of discarding still palatable

actually, it wouldnt be a problem but itd depend on how often youd have to do it. like you essentially discard to play mana in duel masters but you only did it once and the effect was there. if the disadvantage wasnt as frequent then itd make morale boosting more of a strategic choice than a cumbersome hurdle that cant be avoided