Comments on ZombieInMyPiecepack

# 2 Comments. # This game has some great potential, but needs a rework. Firstly, As someone who hasn't played the original ZimP, the description for searching for and burying the zombie totem is too vague. "Spend 2 complete turns in this room" could mean:

• Stay in the room and advance the clock and roll the dice. The other rules imply that you can't stay in the same room, but the temple and the graveyard is an exception.
• You must leave the room and come back in, advancing the clock and rolling dice a total of three times (Once when you enter, once when you leave, and once more the second time you enter)
• Any one of the above, but if zombies force you out of the room, you must "reset" and spend a new 2 turns in the rooms, as though you entered it for the first time.

After consulting the original ZimP rules, I went with the first, since it seemed most consistent. The second problem with this game is that most turns lack an interesting decision, which is crucial in any board game, but almost compulsory in one with only one player. In most turns, no decision is made at all, and the only move is to keep moving. The only real decision made during a game is whether or not to push your luck in the Temple or the Graveyard, weighing the cost of whether to stay and risk another zombie attack or to run and cower for a while. These were when I had the most fun, trying to figure out if it was worth getting healed up or trying to beat the game before the zombie counter ticked up to 5. As a result, most games end in a steamroll after lucking out and collecting all 5 arms tokens and two lucky rolls, or begging your dice not to let you down on the very last turn.

Looking at the rules of ZimP, this problem seems to be handily solved by making items a tactical decision to be made at every turn. You can pick up an item almost every turn, but you can only ever carry two, and if you do choose to pick up an item, you must advance the clock. On top of that, each item has different abilities and sometimes synergise with other items.

In short, I'm probably going to make my own ZimP style piecepack solitaire game. The temptation to make a heroic last stand or to push further into your neighbour's dark abode is a great hook, but this game doesn't take nearly enough advantage of it.

-- dther 2020-12-10 09:54 UTC

Well, the great thing about this game's being public domain is that you can improve it six ways to Saturday. You can even retheme it; the original designer of ZimP now has all kinds of Whatever in my Pocket games. Personally, I hope you'll keep the zombie theme and just sharpen the gameplay, or maybe even abstract the mechanics into a piecepack game subsystem so we can have Whatever in my Piecepack!

-- RonHaleEvans 2020-12-10 17:42 UTC