Imagine yourself hanging around one night with three to five friends, all of you bored and somewhat drunk, but in the mood for an old-school board game. “Last Night on Earth” just might be the game to satisfy your needs…if you don’t mind zombies.

This was one of two games that I was interested in purchasing after GenCon. The first was a fabulous beta version of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” which we play-tested with an interesting GM. And by interesting I mean strange. But the game itself, though fast-paced and a little convoluted for my tastes as a novice gamer, showed a lot of promise.

The only problem was that “A Song of Ice and Fire” didn’t have zombies. That was when we passed by Flying Frog Production’s booth in the back corner of the exhibit room. A man in a lab coat, brandishing a stethoscope, introduced himself and asked if we wanted an autograph. It took me a few seconds to realize that the kindly white-haired gentleman in front of me was also featured directly to my left in some pretty gnarly photo-art.

It was ultimately the art that caught my attention. Everywhere I turned at the convention, people were peddling high-fantasy winged monsters and bare-breasted fighting women in chain mail panties. I just wanted something a little more realistic (as realistic as a zombie apocalypse can be, I suppose). So we bought it, not really knowing how the game was played. Doc Brody, who we discovered later is an NPC in the game, did a hell of a job with his little pitch because games were flying off the shelves.

What follows is a detailed description of game play and characters. If you do not want to be spoiled on the game, do not read further. I’ll just let you know that “Last Night on Earth” is well worth the $45, and will provide hours of entertainment.

Game Play:

The game can be played with 2-6 people, but most find it’s best with 4. On our first few attempts it was my fiancée, my younger brother, and myself. One person played the zombies, and the others divided up the heroes, with two characters each. The game is played with a board that has interchangeable panels with different building depicted on them. The center square is an open field, unless you play the advanced games, and then the center square can be flipped. But we weren’t quite there yet.

The object of the standard game is to kill 15 zombies in 15 turns. The zombie player gets a sundial, which counts down until sunset. If two characters die, or the sun sets, the heroes lose.

Everyone has dice, which they use to determine how many squares they can move, or who wins in a fight. The zombies get a stack of zombie cards, and the heroes get their own deck. This is probably the first real incongruity of the game; zombies get many more cards than humans. On each zombie turn, the zombie player draws cards until they have a maximum of four in their hand. Humans can negate their move action if they are in a building to loot the room, but they can only draw one card at a time. That pretty much sucks, because it means that weapons and perks are hard to come by for the humans. To counteract this, many players establish the house rule that, at the beginning of the game, ten cards are discarded; this is useful because some characters can draw certain weapons from the discard pile.

Zombies also spawn very easily, which can make it difficult to escape from certain places because heroes are not allowed to move through walls, nor squares occupied by zombies. If you hadn’t guessed, the game appears (upon the first half-dozen plays or so) to be stacked against the hero players. It is thrilling and frustrating at the same time. This forces the players to want to keep playing until the heroes eventually win; that’s one of the fun parts of the game. It is highly re-playable because everything is so mix-and-match. No two games feel the same.

Characters:

Playability is one fun aspect of the game, but I think that the characters are the best part. Each character has pros and cons, and it’s difficult to win the game until the players actually figure out how the characters’ abilities fit together. I’m going to rank the characters from least awesome to most.

Johnny – High School Quarterback.

We deemed this character Johnny Dumbass. In every game that Johnny was drawn for, he inevitably died early on. He has two very cool abilities: one is that he always wins on dice ties (zombies automatically win ties otherwise), and he has the ability to “Blitz.” He can run into zombie squares, fight, and then continue his move action. The only problem is that he begins in the high school gym (which happened to be in play every time he was), right next to a zombie spawning point which is usually overrun before he gets much of a chance to do anything. Add this to the fact that two hits and he’s dead, and Johnny pretty much sucks.

Billy – Another High School Jock. Sheriff’s son.

Billy is emo. He has emo hair and constantly gets stuck with the zombie curse of “Teen Angst,” which forces him to roll with one less fight die if he’s in a square with another hero. The only two perks that Billy gets are his extra fast movement (plus 1 to every movement roll) and his ability to heal himself by giving up his move action. If Johnny hadn’t died every game, I’d place Billy as the worst, but he somehow manages to survive. Lucky emo bastard.

Nurse Becky – Umm…Nurse.

Becky wears inappropriately short skirts to work. That said, she can be useful because she can heal one wound from a hero in the same space. She is the only character in the game that can heal another, but she can’t heal herself. This is her only real perk, aside from having three hits (instead of two) before she dies.

Jenny – Farmer’s Daughter.

Jenny’s model is badass because she carries a chainsaw that looks like a giant phallus. She has a few cool abilities, too, though she’s another one of those “two hits = dead” kids. Jenny is a Farm Girl, so naturally, if she’s in the Barn or the Cornfield, she gets to roll an extra fight dice. Another bonus of that is if she’s in the Cornfield, zombies have to roll a 5 or a 6 before they can even find her to try and devour her brains. If the Barn card isn’t part of the board, however, she’s not completely useless; she gets to add a point to any roll to test whether a hand weapon breaks after use. This is helpful if she has the baseball bat, which can become a killing machine.

Sally – High School Sweetheart. (So we’ve got two jock boys, a farmer’s daughter and a sweetheart? No Debate Club or A/V Team? What a shitty school.)

Sally is anti-gun, but she can use a revolver. It’s best if she teams up with the Sheriff, for reasons that you’ll soon find out. The nifty thing about Sally is that she’s a lucky girl; she can force a Zombie to re-roll their fight dice once per fight. Very handy.

Sheriff Anderson – Small Town Lawman.

He is the only character that starts off with a weapon, the revolver. Every time he is in the Sheriff’s station, he can pick up the revolver from the discard pile in place of his move action. This is awesome, because if anyone else is in the room with him, they can pick up the pump-action shotgun from the discard pile (which is a condition of the sheriff’s station), and the place becomes a freaking armory. If Sally is in the room with him, he can simply hand over his revolver and pick up a new one from the discard pile. It’s too bad his son is such a pansy.

Jake Cartwright – Drifter.

This dude is awesome. He’s dressed like Cousin Eddy or Jayne Cobb, and in the cover art he is wielding the badass chainsaw. In addition to having three hits before he dies, Jake is also able to draw two cards on his loot turn instead of the usual one. In a game where heroes get very few cards to use, this is extremely helpful. Plus, he’s just cool to play.

And now, the best character in the game…

Father Joseph – True Man of the Cloth AssKicking

At first glance, it might appear that he would suck because he refuses to use guns. That’s really his only negative. This man has the ability to use the “Faith” card, which equals a permanently extra fight die. Throw a holy baseball bat in his hands, and there’s a possibility that Father Joe is beating down zombies with four fight dice! He’s also not susceptible to the dreaded “Last Night on Earth” card, which forces a male and female hero in the same space to get it on in place of their turns. Father Joe’s above all that sinful hoopla; the man just wants to kill some undead.

I recommend this game. The rules are easy to learn, and there are handy turn cards to remind you how the order of play transpires. The fun comes in the way it all plays out as a B-movie, which is helped by the fact that the art is reminiscent of fifties horror flicks. “Last Night on Earth” is simply a well-done game. I look forward to picking up the expansion, “Growing Hunger,” and am also eagerly awaiting the arrival of “A Touch of Evil,” which is from the same company; both promise just as much fun.

Visit Flying Frog Productions to learn more about their games.