Zombie Dice and Cthulhu Dice are both brief, simple dice games designed and published by Steve Jackson. Steve Jackson even noted that both games were inspired by his playing Le Bomb for the first time. They are sufficiently similar that I am reviewing them together and giving them a common rating. Both games feature art by Alex Fernandez, but without a board, cards or even much of a box, there is very little role for his artwork in the games.
Let's dive into each game individually to understand their mechanics and appeal.
Zombie Dice: A Brain-Eating Frenzy
Zombie Dice is exactly what it says. Zombie Dice is not the hardest game in the world, and many gamers out there will absolutely hate it. It’s incredibly simple, basic to a fault (almost), but still… I reckon it’s got a certain charm. You could almost see this as a combat system in a more complex release rather than a standalone game, but it’s fun. A push-your-luck affair, you receive thirteen custom made dice, a cup to shake them up in and a rules sheet. That’s it.
In Zombie dice, you play a hungry Zombie, looking to eat human brains without getting shot. The dice are six sided, with 3 kinds of faces: brains, feet, and shotgun blasts. The dice come in three colors: green, yellow, and red. The balance of sides is most favorable to the player on the green dice, and least favorable on the red dice. The dice are well-made.
Each turn, you blindly choose three dice - each representing a human - shake them up and hope for the best. If you roll a brain, splendid - that’s a point for you. Collect three shotgun blasts, however, and your turn is over. Brains and blasts are put to the side, but footsteps mean you must keep that dice should you choose to roll again. After each roll, you get the choice to take your points or roll again - the footstep dice go back in the cup and you randomly grab however many you need to get back to three, shake them again and see what you get.
Read also: Call of Cthulhu: A Must-Play for Horror Fans?
You must also consider that the dice come in three colours; green are the easiest to devour, yellows are pretty tough, but reds are filled with potential death. Your decision must rest on how far you’re willing to chance your points combined with what dice are left over. Ahhh, brains. Tasty, moreish brains.
Zombie Dice: A simple yet engaging push-your-luck game.
You need to keep score in this game with pen and paper, or add some scoring tokens. Play proceeds clockwise around the table. On her turn, the active player rolls 3 dice drawn at random for the tube. The player keeps all brains and shotgun blasts rolled, and decides whether to keep rolling. If she rolls again, picks up the feet dice from the previous roll and adds dice from the cup to make 3. If, after any roll, the player has 3 or more shotgun blasts her turn ends and she gets no points. She can end her turn voluntarily after any roll, and get all rolled brains as points.
When a player reaches or passes 13 points, play continues back to the start player. The player with the most points wins. This is a push your luck dice game, like a simplified version of Ten Thousand or Cosmic Wimpout. The three colors of dice do create a little bit of odds calculation when it is time to re-roll.
How to Play Zombie Dice | Roll For Crit
Cthulhu Dice: Losing Your Marbles to Madness
Moving on, the partner release to Zombie Dice is the even more portable Cthulhu Dice (although it should really be Cthulhu Die, as you only get one, albeit a customised twelve sided effort). The aim of the game is to remain sane while all around you lose their minds thanks to the influence of The Ancient One.
Read also: Descent into Madness
In Cthulhu dice, you play one of a group of cultuists trying to drive each other insane with arcane knowedge. Its components are a special 12 sided die, with a skewed distribution of 5 action symbols, and 18 sanity tokens - green glass marbles. The 20 sided die is cool-looking, and comes in a wide choice of colors. The other components are disappointing. There is really no excuse for a professionally published game to use glass marbles as components, although I suppose they make losing your marbles jokes possible. Zombie dice comes in a banal ziplock bag; at a minimum this game should have come in its own cloth bag. Steve Jackson Games has done nothing to improve its reputation for using cheap components with this game. It is nice however that the whole game will fit in your pocket.
Sanity points are represented as small green glass pebbles - each ‘cultist’ starts with three - and the rules are simple. Choose a victim, roll the die and see what comes up - depending on which symbol appears, you may force the victim to lose a Sanity token to Cthulhu or even steal one back for yourself. If you manage to be the last one standing, you’re declared the winner.
Play proceeds clockwise around the table. Each turn the active player designates a sane opponent (one who still has one or more marbles) to attack and rolls the die. If the roll is yellow sign the target looses one marble to the center of the table (to Cthulhu). If the roll is tentacle the active player steals a marble from the target player. If the roll is elder sign the player gets a marble back from the center of the table. If the roll is Cthulhu, all players loose 1 marble to the center of the table. The target player then rolls the die in retaliation against the attacker, following the same rules.
Cthulhu Dice: A game of sanity and madness.
Once a player looses all her marbles, she is insane. Insane players continue to attack others on their turn, but cannot be attacked. They cannot get sanity from tentacle rolls, and can only gain sanity points by rolling the elder sign. When only one, or no players have sanity remaning, the game is over. The last player with sanity wins. If all players loose their sanity on the last turn, no one wins. This is an exceptionally simple take that game.
Read also: Description of Cthulhu
Aside from the obvious priniciple of attack the player with the most sanity left, there are no real decisions to in Cthulhu dice. Even this choice is a little pointless, since the target player will always get to retaliate. It seems to me that with a little imagination some mechanism could have been added to give players more incentive to attack specific others.
Component Quality
Components-wise, the dice are great, but I think there’ll be problems with the cup - I’ve only played a few (admittedly rowdy) games and the top of it is getting a bit wrecked already.
Here's a comparison table of the components:
| Game | Components |
|---|---|
| Zombie Dice | 13 custom dice, cup, rules sheet |
| Cthulhu Dice | 12-sided die, 18 sanity tokens (marbles) |
Final Thoughts
A bit too simple, unfortunately. Whereas Zombie Dice has a game at its heart (even though it’s far from complex one), Cthulhu Dice feels a bit flat. Roll, move counters, pass to next player - there’s not much in the way of thought and everything is down to the luck of the roll. My group had fun with it, but it was the gaming equivalent of a vol-au-vent - small, looked pretty, but ultimately insubstantial.
If you’re going to go for one of these releases, I’d suggest you plump for Zombie Dice - it has a bit more longevity and certainly gave us more of a laugh. Both Zombie Dice and Cthulhu dice are fun games to play with younger children. There is a nine year old I play with regularly, and he likes both these games. The games are intended to be silly fun for adult gamers, and for this purpose they work less well. Steve Jackson said he was out to capture the simple, silly fun of Le Bomb, while adding a more of a game to it. There is a little bit more to both these games than Le Bomb, but not enough. Of the two, Zombie Dice has marginally more decision making, while Cthuhu dice has more thematic appeal. If you just need a very fast game you can play until the rest of your games group shows up, or until your familys food arrives at a restaurant, then either of these works decently for that purpose.
Zombie Dice and Cthulhu Dice are both published by Steve Jackson Games and should be available in your local game shops now. They can be played by as many people as you please and take only a few minutes to finish a game.