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  • Hey everybody! Final thoughts time for Tiny Epic Zombies,

  • which, like all the Tiny Epic games, delivers what it sets out to do.

  • It is an epic experience in a tiny little box with a tiny footprint.

  • This game is very sharp. And I think...

  • the thing that really sets it out from...

  • I mean there's a lot of games out there. Heck, there's Tiny Epic Defenders,

  • games where, "Oh! I've got a little character and I move him around a map

  • and I fight bad guys and interact with stuff and I complete quests, etc., etc."

  • There's a lot of board games that do that.

  • What makes this unique is that sense of speed: the fact that you can't do anything if you don't first move.

  • They say it right in the rules book: You have to constantly keep moving to survive.

  • That means if you start your turn: "Oh, there's already the thing I want right here, and there's a bad guy for me to fight!"

  • Nuh-uh! Doesn't matter. You have to move before you can do anything.

  • So if you start your turn and there's a zombie there,

  • well, you can run away and then shoot at him. And hey, after that on your second move you can move back and get the thing.

  • That creates an interesting puzzle of time management and travel management.

  • Because often that makes it tough for you to do things at peak efficiency.

  • But it always makes things interesting and it always just keeps the game going super duper fast.

  • As the zombies build up and start beating down your door, and you're running around like crazy to complete these objectives and trying not to die...

  • because when you die...when the teenager here dies and becomes the teenager zombie, and adds her powers to the powers they already had....

  • Oh my gosh. That's when things start getting really exciting. And then you run out of extra lives; and then your barricade falls; and you lose your last life...

  • And now you've got no more spare lives; are you going to be able to make it?

  • "Oh! I've only got a few more turns! But there's a...!"

  • That stuff is cool and fun and we actually enjoy it quite a bit.

  • Now one thing I will say is I think the game is definitely at its best if you've got a player who wants to take control of the zombies himself.

  • Because then it really elevates. The mind games that start to play...

  • That player's main action at the end of every player's turn, he gets to choose, "Right. I think next turn, this is what you're going to do."

  • Because he's listening to the human players!

  • And the human players are talking about when they're going to try and do.

  • And he says, "Oh! Is that what you're going to try to do? Well, I'll just give you this search card so that when you end up there,

  • you'll end up making noise and that will work for me."

  • So the human players know that and they've got to try to out-think him.

  • Because he has access not only to this top line ability, like what you saw in the co-op run-through I did,

  • but he has access to these abilities too; and the more he gets to use these, the more powerful they become.

  • You know, it's like a little tech-tree that he works his way up.

  • And if all that weren't enough, he can also make zombies move around and that can trigger cascade effects and all kinds of stuff as well,

  • in addition to just putting zombies out on the board.

  • Plus, he doesn't put zombies out dumbly. The dummy player says, "Oh, blue? I'll just put a one in each blue."

  • But the human player can put both of them over here, so that he really pushes instead of one in one place and one in another.

  • So the game, I think, really elevates to something very very special when you've got a human player.

  • And you can even play that two players: that means one player controls the zombies and the other player controls two humans that are running around.

  • Now, if you want to see that, since I didn't demo it, if you go to the Kickstarter page (hit that "i" in the top right corner of the screen)

  • you'll be able to find a video done by Never Board Gaming, a really great channel. Check them out. They do really nice videos. I'm a subscriber.

  • Cuz they do a full play-through of a 3 player game where somebody is the zombie, and you can start to see how that works.

  • That's what really elevates the experience. It's a fun cooperative game, don't get me wrong.

  • But, having played the player vs. player or the one vs. all, that's when it gets really, really fantastic.

  • I have to admit, I have actually not tried the competitive version; that might be really interesting as well.

  • You can play where the zombies are kind of dumb, they don't really use their special powers very much,

  • but the fact that players are racing, because everybody wants to be the one to do the majority of completion so that they can be the ultimate leader.

  • I really should try that, because I think that would add an extra level of urgency and tension.

  • Where, "Yeah, that thing I was going to go for, I set myself up...oh, you'll just take it next turn and now I got to go figure something else to do."

  • That could be pretty neat also.

  • Again, I said it right up front. More than anything else, that's the strength of this game: so much variety.

  • If you check out the Kickstarter page, I only showed you just the basic characters, the basic buildings,

  • but there's the deluxe version, with the additional characters; There are different types of stores that are on the other sides of the stores that it comes with;

  • Different objectives. Oh, and also one thing I forgot to mention:

  • I don't know if you noticed during the run-through, these are Gamelyn Games ITEMeeples, which are absolutely awesome.

  • Because they were introduced in Tiny Epic Quest, it's a fantasy-adventure game, where you could run around,

  • and when you find a cool sword, you can take your little Meeple and Boom! He's got a sword! Look at him!

  • And then if later on you find, oh, I don't know, uhhh... a second sword!

  • Yeah! Boom! He's running around; he's double-swording it up!

  • So, I didn't show that because, of course, I've got a prototype here,

  • so I don't have what the new pieces are going to be for Tiny Epic Zombies, but I've seen pictures of them.

  • Again, go check out the Kickstarter page. Imagine this little guy wielding a shotgun or a machine gun or a bazooka or a katana.

  • All kinds of...and they look really really cool, the artist's renderings of them.

  • So the game's going to have a really awesome table presence, that when you get those items, and you put them on your character,

  • you instantly feel more powerful; you want to run around and start using these cool things.

  • It's a sweet, sweet little game. I do think that, while it's good as straight co-op, that's probably the weakest mode

  • because basically to create tension and challenge, they just rely on "Okay, let's just overwhelm them. Let's just kind of drown them in zombies."

  • And it would be more fun to have a human player; an intelligence behind them, making more key, strategic decisions about what they're gonna do.

  • But again, yeah, I really want to try the competitive version of this. I think that would be a lot of fun too.

  • Everybody competing to be the next Negan as they run around the mall, not fighting each other, just racing each other. That could be really neat too.

  • Again, so much variety; so many ways to play; it's really very impressive.

  • It is an epic experience in a tiny little box.

  • That folks, is Tiny Epic Zombies. And thank you very much for watching. Have a very nice day. Talk to you later. So long.

  • Buh-bye!

Hey everybody! Final thoughts time for Tiny Epic Zombies,

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