Zombies for the whole family.

Zombie Dice

Our most recent acquisition is one we've been meaning to acquire since we saw the Table Top episode featuring to some time ago.

At the moment I’m on the look out for fun, QUICK 'filler' games. Those games you pull our during the dinner run or while you're waiting for the other table to finish their game. Quick, light and just plain fun.

Not surprisingly anything that the kids can play NOW instead of 'in the near or not so near future' also wins my attention.

So how do I feel about the theme? To be honest it's not one I'd have shown my girls so young, but very shortly after Miss 5 started school she started talking about zombies. Well OK then that burst that little bubble I was trying to maintain and there was no putting it back together. With that in mind...the theme in zombie dice, while fun and quite accurate it's light, there is zero theme immersion for this game, it's a dice game after all. Meaning tat it has turned out to be a fun little game to play with miss 5 and much to my surprise she not only understands the rules, and tactics but she is good at it. So far she's won more than half of the games she's played.

Educational value on a game like this could be overlooked but watching her I could see what she had already learned, and what she could learn by playing this.

The standard lessons apply, turn taking, waiting, and good sportsmanship, all a part of playing games and important aspects that make the game fun for everyone.

She's beginning to learn that not winning is OK so long as you had fun.

The one that I see she's grasping very effectively that just blows my mind is the risk reward aspect of the game. Only one gunshot, OK she'll roll again but two? NO that's not worth it and it's time to bank the brains. She's even grasping already that the green is good the red is bad and the yellow is in between. It really is quite remarkable to see her understanding this and implementing it. She's only 5! Still a baby!

As for what she can still learn by playing game, the mathematics involved in scoring is a learning curve for her. You have three brains, you just banked five, so how many do you have. It's simple addition. I think at her level it'd be easier if we used tokens to give her a visual and a physical element to count out her brains. The dice we're using to keep count of our score is a little abstract for her at this stage.

Still it's a fun game that is great to play with the family, it doesn't take long so multiple plays are inevitable.