It would seem a theme beyond games well-themed of Halloween has emerged this month.
So sticking with the added aspects of a print and play, and a game which can be played solitaire, I will look at Zed Deck this week.
Zed Deck, by game designer Chris Fee, is a solitaire print-and-play card game. As a card game I recommend you at least sleeve the cards once printed and cut out, and I generally back a printed card with a cheap playing card.
The game is another one with www.boardgamegeek.com roots, where it was designed in February 2011 for the Quick Print and Play Design Challenge contest. Again a plug to the site for providing such contests to stimulate game design efforts.
As far as theme in Zed Deck “you must battle and dodge zombies while gathering supplies before the full moon, when all the zombies go into a frenzy.
“In your search you will encounter events such as various zombies, other survivors, and different hazards. You decide how many resources you wish to devote to overcoming an event (in the form of cards drawn). The more cards you draw the better your chance of overcoming the event but the less cards left in the deck to potentially gain supplies and equipment.”
The finite deck size really makes a player focus of when to use their resources. In that regard you do have the feeling you are on the run from the undead and having to make tough decisions about what to do to survive.
As for it being a solitaire game the designer said he likes that play option himself.
“I like a good solitaire game,” he said. “I sometimes play a solitaire at night after my wife and kids have gone to bed or on a quiet weekend if my son is on the computer so I can’t get him to play another game.”
That said Fee said a solitaire game tends to be best when a quick one.
“Well, I’m not a big fan of really big/long games, solitaire or otherwise, so I like quick playing games,” he said. “I also like the game to feel like it hits its theme in the game play.
“But for a good solitaire game, it has to have important decisions to be anything more than just a time-filler. I think Zed Deck accomplishes this with the decision on how many cards to draw as you balance risk versus reward.”
As for PnP, Fee said he appreciates them, although he is not always an avid maker of such games for his own enjoyment.
“It varies with my free time and, frankly, budget,” he said. “Back just before I made Zed Deck I was really into PnP, partially due to just coming off losing my job (plant closing).
“I also do less now that my younger son is older (11) as he is very much an Ameritrasher at heart. He likes games to have plastic dudes and lots of dice to roll.
“But, he has also worked on some games of his own (a werewolf game using LEGO Heroica pieces).
“The main difference, to me, between a PnP and store bought game as far as worth is that the investment in a PnP is usually in time, rather than money. I’ve got to feel that my time invested in making the game is worth it. One of the reasons I like quick building games.
“I’ve seen some PnPs that I think look really cool but I know I would go from enjoying building it to feeling it was a slog just because of the sheer number of pieces.”
But what about Zed Deck? How did it come to be as a game?
“Zed Deck actually started as the same basic idea — go through the deck drawing cards to meet challenges — as a cartoon fight game; the working title was Cartoon Violence,” said Fee, adding “think Tom & Jerry or Bugs & Daffy. Anvils, ironing boards, and other cartoon fight tropes. There were three stats (instead of ZD’s two): tough, smart, fast. Each challenge was worth victory points and you would turn the completed challenges 180 degrees if you beat the challenge so it didn’t require the score tracker that Zed Deck does.
“I was having some trouble with the three stats balancing and, frankly, the artwork was going to be impossible to find enough appropriate non-copyrighted pictures. I think it was the artwork that had me searching for a different theme and when I was playing with the idea of zombies I changed it to the life points, since unlike a cartoon character, your zombie apocalypse survivor could die, and supplies for score it clicked.”
Fee said the game felt ‘right’ on its first real play through.
“Really, I think it was my first play through with the deck once I had my playtest copy made up,” he said. “It flowed well and needed relatively few tweaks before I was happy with it for the gameplay.”
While not a prolific designer Fee said he does like ZD.
“Of my two games listed in the (board game) Geek database, I actually prefer Zed Force. Hex-chit wargames aren’t something I play a lot but I really liked how the game captured the feel I was after,” he noted. “I was inspired by the problems described in fighting zombies by the traditional military in World War Z; the book not the nothing-what-so-ever to do with movie of the same name).
“But I probably play Zed Deck more just because it is so quick to play a game or two when I need a fast time filler. Really, I am happy with both.”
Certainly Zed Deck for an easy PnP effort, that transports compactly, and plays quickly with good in-game tension, this is one easy to recommend people give a try. Files to print can be found by searching the game on boardgamegeek.com
