Industry talk: Rob Butler Ill Gotten Games (Z War One)

A few weeks back now I was treated to a one on one intro game of Z War One, a new zombie game, by the games creator Rob Butler. I first stumbled across this product at the UK Games Expo 2012 in Birmingham. There I had a brief chat with Rob about the game and what it was, he showed me some mock up board tiles and spoke about character progression and a narrative driven game, with the plot delivered by comics. I'll be honest I was interested at the premise and a bit wary given the fact that it is yet another zombie game. Since then of course we've had Zpocalypse and Zombicide to add to my current zombie stalwart's of Zombies!!! and Last Night on Earth. Once more the marketplace is looking rather crowded again, so I arranged for Rob to pop down from his Sheffield based fortified zombie resistant bunker, to visit me at Zmbie Defence HQ in Birmingham... trust me we're well prepared for Z-day round these parts.

Two of Rob's demo mini's. I'm sure he won't mind me saying they're not quite up to Golem Studio standards.

The first game I played was the common all garden this is how the game works and this is how you shoot zombies. It worked pretty well as an introduction to the Z War One universe and how the game plays. Honestly, there wasn't anything really remarkable about the mission, it's simply get to point A and them explore points B and C and get the hell out of there. It did though allow me to see exactly what the games primary influence was, and that's survival horror games. Primarily the Resident Evil games, with an emphasis placed on limited ammo and medpacks. Every turn you spawn more and more zombies as you go, and it's a question of avoiding them if you can, and shooting them if you can't. It's a tidy resource mechanic at the heart of the game, which is subtly different to many recent zombie games out there that place the emphasis on butchering vast swathes of the undead. The game still feels like it needs some more refinement and polish, but I'm glad to report that Rob confirmed he felt the same and was still working on perfecting his formula, but more importantly despite this the game was still fun to play and the underlying mechanics seem sound.
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