Off season crossroads. Board game Dead Season: Crossroads (Dead of Winter)

Board game "Low Season"

Recently, in the world of board games, it has become fashionable to release original remakes - reworked versions of popular games. We have already talked about the pair “Arkham Horror” and “Ancient Horror”. "Dead Season" is also considered a remake of the rather popular game "Zombicide". However, if in the case of “Horror” such a comparison is more than appropriate, then “Dead Season” is still an independent game, although it is noticeable that its creators took into account the experience of “Zombicide” - the disadvantages of its predecessor both in terms of the complexity of the rules and in terms of game mechanics are taken into account. The common theme - the world after the zombie apocalypse - simply forces comparison of these games.

“Dead Season” was released in 2014 and literally within a year managed to win huge crowds of fans around the world. Today this is one of the most popular board games at various game libraries, sales are also very high.

The plot of "The Dead Season" is not original - it has already been used thousands of times in films, books and board games. Something has happened in the world. The bulk of the population turned into zombies, and only a handful of survivors were able to retain their human appearance. They now need to hold out at all costs.

Noteworthy is the slightly strange name, which does not really fit into the logic of the game itself. Of course, many people kill and die in the game, but why “season”? These are features of the Russian translation; in the original the game is called Dead of winter, which clearly indicates that the theme is related to winter. This does not affect the game mechanics, but is reflected in tasks, for example, you need to collect fuel often to keep warm, or you can get frostbite, which will lead to death after three turns, and so on.

Game components

“Low Season” surprises you from the first glance with the huge number of elements in the box. There are 657 of them in total - cards, figures, tokens, tablets. It is varied and rich, although, of course, it is impossible to quickly start a game with such an arsenal - the starting layout of all elements takes at least 15 minutes even for experienced players. In addition to quantity, the quality of all elements is noteworthy. Colorful printing, good materials for both cards and figures - this cannot but rejoice. It is unknown how durable they will be with constant use, but the new game looks simply gorgeous. Here, of course, we must pay tribute not only to the localization company, but also to the American game developers Ilas Veg and John Gilmore, who provided excellent drawings.

Also noteworthy is the lack of a full map. Combinable squares are perhaps the best find of the creators of Zombicide. The authors of “Dead Season” decided to abandon the map altogether; in this game there is only a conditional playing field and conditional locations. When we send a character to school, for example, he doesn't have to go outside and actually count the moves, like in Zombicide, we simply move the character figurine to the School card. This simplification has a negative impact on the atmosphere, but it allows us to simplify the rules.

Game mechanics

The game begins with the choice of a scenario, which sets the main nuances, first of all, the victory conditions. After this, each player chooses their characters. There are 30 of them in total, and the selection mechanism is semi-closed - you need to pull four cards from the common deck and keep two for yourself. The variety of characters is pleasing - the same heroes do not become boring after several games. Initially, each player has two characters, one becomes the leader of the group, the second - an assistant. Of course, each character has different skills and abilities that can and should be used in the party. Considering that characters are obtained virtually randomly, it is impossible to talk about using one favorite tactic in all rounds; each new game you have to adapt to your heroes and play taking into account their capabilities.

By the way, the number of characters a player has is not constant. Among the various bonus cards, there are also those that allow you to take additional heroes. In addition, existing characters die in battle or from cold. If all the characters have died, the player has the right to recruit new ones.

The selected scenario sets the overall team goal, but in addition to it, the players have their own, which is drawn out in the dark on a special card. The one who fulfills exactly his goal wins, another thing is that in most cards a personal goal is achievable only taking into account the victory of the entire team, so you also need to work for the team. However, there are a number of cards on which the player is given the goal of disrupting the team's victory. The rules stipulate that there can be no more than one such card in a deck. Considering that the target cards are drawn in the dark and from a fairly large set, players do not know for certain whether there will be a traitor in their company and who he is. But there is always a reason to suspect neighbors. Moreover, a reasonable traitor will not immediately “get fired”, but will try to remain incognito in order to strike at the decisive moment.

The presence of personal goals allows us to call “Dead Season” a semi-corporate game. It involves working for the team and remembering personal goals. Between these two tasks, players balance the entire party, because if they sacrifice the latter for the overall victory, then the bonuses may not be enough to fulfill their personal goal.

If players decide that there is a traitor among them, they can put the issue to a vote and kick him off the team. He doesn’t stop playing; on the contrary, he becomes a hermit, receives a new mission card and begins to fight both against the zombies and the remaining players. The election mechanism is very reminiscent of the popular psychological game “Mafia”. The players do not know for sure who the traitor is, and vote at the insistence of one of them, without having accurate evidence. Naturally, they can make a mistake, then the real traitor will remain on the team, and the good player will go into exile.

The presence of passive survivors must be recognized as an excellent find of the game’s authors. In addition to the characters who can fight zombies and look for food, there are also a certain number of other people at the base who do not bring any benefit to the team, but, on the contrary, require food and protection. In a real zombie apocalypse situation, these would be the wounded, children and the elderly. Initially, the number of “passives” depends on the number of players, but then only increases when the corresponding event cards are drawn. Passive survivors drag the team to the bottom, but it is impossible to abandon them - the death of any of them lowers morale, and its zeroing leads to an instant loss of the team.

The main essence of the game is completing tasks to find resources. Each turn, players are tasked with finding a certain amount of certain resources and adding them to the team pot. It doesn’t matter who contributes, only the total amount matters. Which again raises the question of the relationship between the personal and the team. Collecting and executing a plan is also a delicate thing. Players place resource cards in secret and then shuffle them, so this is freedom for the traitor: he can slip in any other card, thereby failing the team’s task, but at the same time maintaining incognito.

The character’s capabilities, as in many games, in “Dead Season” are determined, firstly, by the initial parameters, and secondly, by the dice. If you forward the required value, you can attack or search for resources; if you don’t, you can’t. An important difference is that the dice are not rolled before the action, but at the beginning of the turn. Taking into account the obtained result, the player can distribute moves between his characters. That is, if you roll two “fours” and a “two,” then you can perform actions with characters whose minimum threshold is not lower than these values. And this is also an interesting element of the strategy. The die in such a situation actually represents an action; any player at any time in the game should have one more of them than there are characters.

Where are the zombies, you ask? They, as it should be in games of this genre, are everywhere, but in the first moves they don’t pester you. Zombies appear both on the street near the player base and in each location, but for the time being they accumulate. When the number becomes critical, zombies break through and begin to attack people. The characters in “Dead Season” do not have two lives, as in “Zombicide” - they die from the very first zombie attack. The death of each survivor lowers morale, so the team can lose by simply losing too many fighters. This forces you to monitor the number of zombies in accumulation areas and periodically organize a cleanup. If, of course, you manage to arrange it.

The battle mechanism is simplified as much as possible, but what is there - there is no mechanism at all. If a player has dice with a value that exceeds the attack threshold, then he is considered to have killed a zombie. It would seem that it would be easier, hit the zombies and fight, but this requires action, and they are not always enough even to search for resources. A more complex calculation system is used when two survivors fight (hermits and traitors, this is a feature in the game for you), but this does not happen often.

Random in the game is determined by a 12-sided die and a stack of intersection cards. The cube is a tricky thing. The game's authors sensibly reasoned that in the world of zombies something must always happen, and the simplest operations can end badly, so the rules state that players must roll a 12-sided die whenever moving to a new location or after attacking a zombie (if nothing else is said). Most of the faces of the cube lead to nothing, but a few faces are treacherous. You can get either wounded or frostbite, which is the same injury, but only accumulates every turn.

If a character receives more than three wounds, he dies. Wounds and frostbite can be treated with first aid kits, if they are available, of course, and if they do not need to be sacrificed to the altar of completing a common task. The worst thing is that one side of the cube leads to the instant death of the character. That is, I decided to go to the library (one of the locations in the game) and died along the way. For a normal world it sounds crazy, but for a zombie apocalypse this is par for the course. Of course, throwing out one face on a dodecahedron is not that high of a chance, but it happens a couple of times per game and usually seriously spoils the strategy.

Crossroads cards are ordinary events that may or may not happen. It works like this. During one player's turn, his neighbor to the right takes a crossroads card and monitors events. If the conditions specified in the card are met, then the neighbor reads out the contents of the card, and if not, then it is “silently” discarded. Mostly, of course, there is something bad, but sometimes there are also useful things.

Conclusions

It is impossible not to pay attention to an indisputable fact - the game about zombies “Dead Season” corrects all the weak points of another game about zombies “Zombicide”. It’s impossible to consider this a mere coincidence, but we can hardly talk about any kind of continuity; rather, this is a logical development of the genre and an adequate response to the new needs of players. The game time has been reduced (although the layout is still long), the rules have become noticeably simpler and clearer, and even with the advent of the so-called alpha players who pull the blanket over themselves and lead the entire team, which “Zombicide” was subject to, it was possible to cope with the help of individual tasks. It’s great that at every moment of the round the player is faced with a choice. This allows you to implement tactical strategies and develop thinking. It should be noted that the game turned out to be well-balanced, extremely logical and very multivariate - you can play hundreds of games without repeating it. At the same time, the balance is shifted towards the defeat of the players - as in Arkham Horror, winning in the Dead Season is much more difficult than losing, and this is a deliberate move by the authors.

Among the disadvantages of the game, one can note the decrease in the atmosphere of the zombie apocalypse compared to “Zombicide”. When you walk on a very natural map, and zombie figures are chasing you, you can really imagine it. The abstraction of the “Dead Season” does not affect the strategic alignment, but it no longer gives those sensations. Some people may not call this a disadvantage, but for other players this point is important. We did not find any other noticeable disadvantages. The only thing we can complain about is the limit of five players (such games are often used in large companies), as well as the price of 5,000 rubles. The latter, however, is easily explained by the huge number of elements (and, as a consequence, high cost), as well as the high quality of their execution.

As part of the promotion, we present to the public a translation of the review of the game “Low Season. Crossroads." The original material is located.

Photos from the Russian edition are used in the translation.

Snowy Wonderland

Few board games on the market today are able to involve the player in the way that Off Season does. Every little detail, every mechanic, every line of fiction makes you feel cold, hungry and afraid.

Each participant in the game takes care of a group of survivors who are faced with all the harsh consequences of a zombie post-apocalypse somewhere in the American suburbs. At the start of the game, participants only have two survivors in the party, but over time this number will grow and possibly decrease.

Each game has its own mission: with its own winning conditions and features of preparation for the game. Also, every round you have to overcome some new crisis: if you do not want a disaster to occur, you must fulfill certain conditions. On your turn, you use dice to take actions, trying to bring yourself closer to victory or prevent some misfortune from happening. You always have one action die, and each survivor in your group gives one more die (that is, you start the game with three dice).

The survivors settled in a frozen area, but fenced off from zombies, outside of which there are the usual attractions of the American outback: a hospital, a gas station, a school, and so on. They were once centers of social life, but now they are just empty buildings. However, you can still find useful resources in them. Naturally, certain types of resources are easier to discover in some places than others. If you need food, you are more likely to find it in a store than in a police station. And if you need a weapon, don't go to the library.

In all these places you will meet zombies. Many people are starting to get a little tired of the dominance of this theme in games and in popular culture, but under the torn clothes of the Dead Season zombies hides dead meat of a completely different freshness than in countless other games about the undead.

Yes, Dead Season is a zombie game, but zombies are the least of what you have to worry about. There are two key elements to the game, one scarier than the other. The first is the pervasive cold, and the second is your own comrades.

Let's deal with the cold first. Everything in “Dead Season” is permeated with it. You have no food because the soil is as hard as rock. It is difficult for you to make forays outside the territory, because it is snowing and its veil hides monsters from you, only those waiting for you. And you're damn cold too. Cold creates fear. And fear breeds despair and anger.

For each pair of survivors in the territory, 1 food token is required at the end of the round. The illustration on the token seems to automatically conjure up a picture of two people huddled together eating cold beans from the same can. At the beginning of the game there is not a sufficient supply of food, which means someone will have to go and get it. In other words, go outside the relatively safe area and walk to a store, school or hospital.

Every time you leave an area, you have to roll the ominous 12-sided damage die, which shows how your walk went: you got there safely, you got hurt, you got frostbite (which means you'll be automatically hit every round). , until you get some medicine or die), or you were destined for a much worse fate - you were bitten.

The bitten character dies. If a bitten character reaches a location where other survivors are located, the leader of their group will have to make a terrible choice: either immediately kill one of the characters in the location and stop the spread of infection, or try to save his life by rolling the same ill-fated die. An empty line - and the character remains alive, and this whole nightmare ends. Any other facet - the character dies, the infection spreads, and you are again asked to make a terrible choice, this time for the next character. A person who has been bitten can make a mess of things in a crowded place.

It's tough. And it's painful. But this doesn't happen often. The bite is only on one edge. But this only makes it more painful.

Not only does character death reduce the number of actions you can perform in a round, but it also has more serious consequences. Most missions fail if the colony's morale drops to zero. Each death reduces morale by 1, pushing you closer and closer to despair. At the same time, you need to worry not only about the characters controlled by the players. During the game, your colony will likely take in “helpless survivors”, represented by tokens with a child’s silhouette. They are completely useless, but they also consume food, and their death reduces morale. One particularly nasty in-game event forces group leaders to vote on whether they should go into a location to look for a lost child (which could end badly for them) or sacrifice a point of morale and leave the child to their own devices. Sometimes the mind tells you that the choice is obvious, but some game situations penetrate to the very heart, and everything becomes not so simple.

You will be driven to despair not only by the death of people, but also by the already mentioned famine. An unsatisfied need for food makes people unhappy. However, there is something worse. Almost every card you play is discarded into the trash heap. If you let the trash pile grow sky high, morale will quickly fall. You need to spend an action to clean up trash, and this action must be performed by one of the characters from time to time. But who would agree to spend valuable time clearing waste? However, someone will have to do it. This game features a lot of unpleasant and disgusting things, but through all these unpresentable things, “Dead Season” seems to be playing with us - with our human nature.

Proof of the depth of the game is that both players who are accustomed to keeping a sober mind and those who tend to get used to the images of the characters they play will find something of their own in this puzzle of survival.

The shaky morale of the colony and the looming threat of famine are complemented by a escalating sense of general paranoia, because while you are trying your best to fulfill the conditions of the mission, your plans may be thwarted by a traitor.

Unlike many other games with a traitor, the reason why you want to stick a knife in the backs of your comrades has a much more thought-out basis than a simple battle between good and evil. The game text explains in detail and clearly why you are going against everyone. The motive may be trauma, love, a thirst for revenge, or a primitive desire to survive at the expense of others.

And each player, even not traitors, has his own personal winning conditions. And although achieving a common goal is one of them, the second will certainly require from time to time deviating from the general accepted line, for example, going to the police station when the hospital would be the most preferable place. And this strange behavior can cast a shadow of mistrust even on an innocent player.

If you behave too suspiciously, your carefree life in the colony may end with a vote for your expulsion. If the other players vote positively, you will leave the territory forever. You will not stop the game, but your life will become much harder, you will have to move from location to location, constantly looking around. You will also receive a new personal goal, reflecting your new status as an outcast and adding a new plot twist to the game.

The highlight of the game's emotional and narrative elements are the stunning intersection maps. Each turn, the active player's neighbor takes one of these cards from the deck. It indicates the condition under which it is activated (for example, the player moves to the library), it also describes a short story, and then gives a choice that the active player must make. These small incidents from the dark apocalypse plunge you even deeper into the cold world of the game, sometimes showing glimmers of hope, sometimes dooming you to further misfortune, sometimes sending you down a new dangerous path.

It's easy to do without these cards; throw them away and you'll still have a solid game, but their presence and the events they bring make Low Season even more atmospheric, blending mechanics and drama into one exciting whole.

You could say that "Low Season" is a game about deprivation. You never have enough food, fuel or trust in your comrades. And zombies are nothing more than a convenient opportunity to show that when people are faced with the threat of their own extinction, the most terrible things are generated not by undead creatures hungry for brains, but by the bottomless depth of despair into which a person sinks deeper and deeper.

About the game

A game about survival in a post-apocalyptic environment, where zombies serve only as a background for the interaction of characters and players. Players take on the role of leaders of several factions of one small colony of survivors. For a common victory, it is necessary to fulfill a common goal for everyone. But for an individual player, the victory of the group does not mean anything, since he also faces his own goal, unknown to the other players. So, as a result, all or only some of the players can win or lose. Each participant will be faced with a difficult decision more than once: to pursue a common goal, or to jeopardize its achievement by trying to complete their secret task.

This game is a joint development of two designers: Isaac Vega (Bioshock Infinite) and Jon Gilmour (Pocket Dungeon). The result of their work was a semi-cooperative board game, the events of which develop in a terrible winter, several months after the zombie apocalypse.

Players lead groups of survivors settled in a barricaded haven called the Colony. Day after day they fight a deadly virus and endless attacks of the dead. Lack of food, water, medicine, constant attacks from the dead, cold and snow - the heroes will face these problems throughout the game. True, all this will turn out to be nonsense compared to the internal squabbles that will arise between the groups every now and then, because in addition to the common goal, each of them will have its own, secret one...

If we talk about the components, there are many of them and they are made very stylishly! A fairly important element of the game is the text of the rules and cards. It is he who sets the atmosphere of the game and immerses the participants in a storm of events.

Equipment:

• 10 double-sided main objective cards
• 24 secret objective cards
• 10 traitor secret target cards
• 10 Exiled Secret Objective cards
• 30 survivor cards
• 5 player boards
• 1 First Player Token
• 25 starting item cards
• 20 police station item cards
• 20 grocery store item cards
• 20 school subject cards
• 20 refueling item cards
• 20 library item cards
• 20 hospital item cards
• 20 crisis cards
• 80 intersection cards
• 25 wound tokens
• 20 Helpless Survivor Tokens
• 20 food tokens
• 20 noise tokens
• 20 barricade tokens
• 6 hunger tokens
• 2 counter tokens
• 30 zombie figures
• 30 zombie tokens
• 30 survivor figures
• 60 plastic figure stands
• 1 colony field
• 6 location boards
• 1 rule booklet
• 30 action dice
• 1 impact cube
• Card size: 63 by 88 mm.

What else will be useful? - special protective pockets will protect each card and allow you to enjoy the game many times. If the protector is worn out, simply replace it, and your cards will remain safe and sound.

And you fell in love with her.

The success of this project and your wishes inspired us to publish a sequel - the board game “Low Season. Long Night”, which became our seventh project.
The world release of this game took place just a couple of weeks ago, and today it can be ordered in Russian.

"Dead season. Long Night"- This is a stand-alone addition to the board game "Dead season. Crossroads", which can be played either separately or combined with the previous game. Like Crossroads, this is a cooperative game for 2 to 5 people, in which participants play as a team, but at the same time pursue their own goals.

You can learn more about the innovations and gameplay of The Long Night in Rodney Smith's training video, which he posted on his video channel (translation: Alexander Petrunin, voice-over: Evgeniy Dovger).

Game "Dead season. Long Night" published by Plaid Hat Games, a publisher specializing in complex atmospheric games. The publisher has only a few games in its arsenal, but almost every one of them has received a number of awards. Isaac Vega and Jonathan Gilmore, authors of the Off Season series, are the publisher's lead developers. Also, the well-known Jerry Hawthorne, author of the best-selling board books “Of Mice and Mysteries” (already localized by Groved Games) and “Of Tails and Feathers” (preparing for localization), had a hand in the creation of “The Long Night.”

The Long Night comes with a hefty array of really well-executed components. Manufacturer: Ludofact printing house, one of the largest and most famous.

Colony field
(a group of survivors moved into the prison).

Cardboard location boards
(including the main locations that you can use to replace the paper tablets from Crossroads).

Figures of survivors, bandits, zombies and zombie mutants
(unique zombies with special properties).

Survivor cards.

Intersection maps.

Crisis maps.

Item cards.

Maps of main and secret objectives.

Upgrade cards

Maps of experiments and side effects.

All kinds of tokens, cubes and much more.

The weight of the game is more than 2 kg. The circulation of this game is part of the worldwide circulation. This guarantees the highest quality of all components.

You can get this price not only in Moscow, but also in those cities where we have partners who have agreed to become a pickup point for our projects. For which we never tire of saying thank you to them, both from us and from the residents of these cities. You can find detailed information about our partners. Find your city on the map!

Here is a list of cities:

Abakan	Kirov	Saint Petersburg
Anapa	Krasnodar	Sevastopol
Armavir	Krasnoyarsk	Severodvinsk
Arkhangelsk	Mound	Serpukhov
Astrakhan	Kursk	Simferopol
Barnaul	Minsk	Smolensk
Belgorod	Moscow	Sochi
Bryansk	Murmansk	Stavropol
Veliky Novgorod	Nizhnevartovsk	Surgut
Vladivostok	Nizhny Novgorod	Tver
Vladimir	Novorossiysk	Tolyatti
Volgograd	Novosibirsk	Tomsk
Voronezh	Noyabrsk	Tula
Vyborg	Omsk	Tyumen
Ekaterinburg	Orenburg	Ulyanovsk
Essentuki	Penza	Ufa
Izhevsk	Permian	Khabarovsk
Irkutsk	Petropavlovsk-Kamch.	Chelyabinsk
Kazan	Podolsk	Chita
Kaliningrad	Pyatigorsk	Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Karaganda	Rostov-on-Don	Yaroslavl
Kemerovo	Ryazan
Kyiv (Ukraine)	Samara

If there is no pickup point in your city, you can receive the game by mail. Price 3600 rubles includes postage costs Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the Republic of Belarus. The game is expected to be delivered in November of this year!

New features introduced in The Long Night (despairs, angry survivors, explosive traps, etc.) and three full-fledged game modules allow for significant diversity in the Crossroads gameplay, and new survivors, objectives, crises and crossroads will ensure that Each of your batches will be different from the previous one. Simply add any desired supplement components to the ones you already have and try to survive the entire off season in one long night.

The components of The Long Night are fully used only when playing with all three modules at once, however, this mode makes the game extremely difficult and is not recommended for beginners. Additionally, some components are present in smaller quantities in The Long Night than in Crossroads (for example, 20 survivors in the new game compared to 30 in the previous game). The lack of components for these two reasons can be compensated by adding components from “Crossroads”. This way, you will significantly increase the variability and replayability of games and you will be sure that a completely new adventure awaits you every time.

If you order "The Long Night" and already own "Low Season: Crossroads", add the word "maps" to the comment.

We have already written that we do not recommend playing this game to persons under 16 years of age. However, as Tom Wasel said, if you let your kids watch The Walking Dead, you might as well have them watch this game. In addition, as in “Crossroads,” all the “harshest” cards are marked with a special icon, so if necessary, you can always quickly find and remove them.

We have provided the opportunity to order two games in a set at a very competitive price: 5590 rub. pickup. Delivery by mail - 6090 rub.

Attention! In this kit you will receive second game edition "Low Season: Crossroads". Corrected edition with changes to the rules and maps.

If you want to buy several games, you can deposit an amount that is a multiple of the selected reward.

Attention wholesale buyers!

We will offer a good price for this and our other games. Send your queries here to . and we will send you our price list.

We know that you are all waiting for additional goals, but the copyright holder fundamentally prohibits us from doing such things. We promise to find a solution to this problem in our next project, but for now...

Do you like board games and movies about the zombie apocalypse? If “yes,” then put aside your business and devote 3 minutes to reviewing the game “Low Season: Crossroads.” From the review you will learn the advantages and disadvantages of this board.

What kind of game?

“Dead Season” is a co-op with the theme of the zombie apocalypse. You are survivors, the game is zombies. As is customary in good co-ops, the game causes suffering and pain, you collectively overcome adversity. The goal is to enjoy the shared experience and attempt to solve a game problem.

Dead season. Crossroads (Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game)

In addition to the co-op, “Dead Season” is also American, where empathy for the heroes is higher than mathematical calculations. Therefore, along the way, you manage to completely immerse yourself in the atmosphere of an alternative present, fear and doom - this is relevant for fans of films and games on a given topic. On the other hand, there are no nightmares, the game does not leave negative psychological consequences.

How to play?

Danger is everywhere, the only island of safety is a colony with a few survivors, but you won’t be able to sit out. From here you have to make risky forays into locations for the necessary items that are required to complete tasks.

At the beginning of the game, we select the main goal. Goals vary in difficulty and game length. Then we lay out the playing field and make a starting layout on it (indicated on the goal card). We will also need 6 locations with items - in fact, items in locations are the key to victory. Each player is given additional secret cards with a personal mission. Thanks to them, you are obliged to collect items not only for the common good, but also for yourself personally, since if you fail to complete your task, even if the colony wins, the game will end in failure for you. In addition, you may get the role of a traitor whose task is to make sure that the good guys lose.

Map with a "main goal". Dead of Winter

Each player will directly lead his own group of survivors (characters), who are recruited at random. During the game, the composition of the group will change: someone will die, perhaps new ones will come. Each character is unique, in addition to the miniature, he has a name and profession, and most importantly, abilities.

Player's tablet in the game "Low Season". Where there is a knife and cubes - a reminder, where cards with people are - characters and their equipment

The game has several game mechanics, the combination of which allows you to fill the short life of a survivor with bright colors. On your turn you will do the following:

1. Roll the dice and choose available actions depending on the result: eliminate zombies, look for “clothes” in locations (the most popular), build barricades, lure zombies;
2. Roleplay characters of your group - as a rule, these are special abilities, sometimes useful, sometimes not very useful, plus equipment attached during the game;
3. Navigate locations- a necessary activity, but risky, each time you move you will have to roll a damage die, as a result, a trip to the store can end in injury, frostbite or death. There are options to avoid trouble: use the character’s ability, if any, or discard the “fuel” from your hand.
4. Play cards from hand. A small number of items will be given at the start, the rest will have to be looked for in locations, and then each player discards cards from his personal hand for general and his own needs. In addition, you can “pump up” characters with items (see above).
5. Read text on cards events. There are 2 types of cards in the game: "Crossroads" And "Crises" "Crossroads" cards affect the active player. On your turn, the neighbor to your right will draw (without showing anyone) a card from the pile and read it out at the moment when the necessary conditions are met. “Crisis” cards are a mini-task for the current round for all survivors - in this way, the game methodically puts spokes in the wheels, making it difficult to complete the main mission.
6. Sometimes vote. There are only 2 reasons for voting - either it is necessary to solve the problem that arose as a result of the Crossroads card being triggered, or the survivors decided to drive the alleged Traitor out of the Colony.
7. Influence “threat markers”. There are several of them in the game:

• Dump– some of the cards from your hand are sent to the landfill. If there is a lot of garbage in the colony, there will be trouble, so you need to keep it clean and spend actions on cleaning.
• Areas in front of the entrance to the colony . The colony attracts zombies, if too many of them accumulate in front of the entrances, then a breakthrough will occur - this is already big trouble, the survivors will die.
• Residents of the colony . Whoever remained in the colony at the end of the round needs food. Hungry colonists are a nuisance. In addition, you need to control the number of survivors in the colony, since the number of new zombies that will appear in front of the entrance depends on this (see above).
• Zombies on location boards . Survivors in locations and the noise they make when searching for items also attract zombies. If there is no place in the locations for zombies, then they rush to the colony.
• Morale. The most important “indicator”. All the troubles described above are reflected, first of all, on him. If the level drops to “0,” the participants will lose (except for the traitor, if he manages to fulfill all personal conditions).

Gameplay

Total:

The gameplay is simple: having certain resources (characters and items), players perform their own and general tasks (main and personal missions, effects of crossroads and crises) moving through locations, obtaining the necessary items and at the same time trying to keep the above “threat indicators” under control. The game lasts, depending on the chosen difficulty, 5-9 rounds (40 – 90 minutes) for three.

Pros

Registration

It's gorgeous! A thick box with laminated inserts, a playing field, cardboard miniatures of characters and zombies, a first player token in the form of a knife, food and wound tokens - everything is stylish and high quality.

But there is something to complain about:

• Cardboard delamination was noticed on a couple of figures
• Location boards made of thin paper.

This has never bothered me, but for an objective assessment I have to state it.

The main feature of the design is cardboard miniatures. Thanks to them, the game comes to life - characters, zombies move through locations, and “threats” take on a real appearance.

Survivors surrounded

Atmosphere

“The Dead Season” doesn’t just ask you to solve a problem, the game asks you to experience it: experience fear, hope, despair and joy. It's like in a good movie, where you begin to empathize with the characters, but here you can also participate!

Creating an atmosphere in the game is solved in the following simple but effective ways:

• Miniatures(see above)
• Characters– there are 30 active survivors in the game: each has their own image, history and abilities
• Lots of literary text which must be read out. A special role is given to the “Crossroads” cards - they are the ones that constantly remind players of the dangerous reality. Moreover, the text is structured in such a way that, despite the fact that it is addressed to an active participant, the interests of the entire group are affected, therefore, if the “Crossroads” card worked, everyone listens to it equally attentively.
  Unfortunately, there are errors in the translation of maps, but this also never bothered us.
• Random. The world around you is full of dangers; you can lose your life instantly as a result of throwing a die. Characters leave the game one after another, and the necessary things in locations are searched for at random. All this pulls the rug out from under your feet, pitting feelings and reason, risks and planning.

Fisherman over the hole?

As a result:

The design suggests images, the text shapes the imagination, and the inability to control the situation gives rise to a feeling of anxiety that is so appropriate in this game. As a result, with great pleasure you fall into this half-game, half-cinematic world, where the fans are completely covered. For maximum enjoyment, I recommend turning on the sound. We use this option. The good thing about it is that it allows you to mix multiple audio tracks.

It is necessary to constantly control the number of zombies in front of the Colony and in locations. The work of shooting zombies is dangerous - it is often accompanied by the death of a character and even outbreaks of infection.

Entry threshold and game time

The rules are stated briefly and clearly. The actions are logical and intuitive; there are no problems with explanations. There are nuances, but not so many as to cause one to stumble during the game. For example, at first it was not entirely clear what was thrown into the landfill and what was not, but in the end we figured it out, the solution was on the surface - we carefully read the conditions on the card itself.

Most importantly, the game has adjustable difficulty - you can choose short, medium and long games. The average batch takes three people a little over an hour, which contributes to the frequent appearance of “Low Season” on our table.

First player issue resolved

The alpha player is the scourge of cooperatives. This happens when a company discovers a leader who “pushes” his decisions in one way or another. There is nothing good about this - from now on one person plays the game. In Dead Season, this problem is solved thanks to the presence of a hidden traitor. Everyone is forced to take responsibility for their decisions, and there is no longer any desire or motivation to transfer authority voluntarily or under pressure to a third party. The presence of an internal enemy increases the acuity of perception and makes everyone suspicious; the danger of betrayal does not give the alpha player a chance to prove himself - he will be kicked out of the colony.

The traitor and his task

Replayability

The game has 20 main and 44 secret objectives, 20 “Crisis” cards and 80 “Crossroads” cards - this is not so much, since many tasks overlap with each other, but in general, the combinations for each game are more or less different. At least, not a single party in our country closely resembled any of the previous ones. And how could it be otherwise, when it is impossible to plan anything and much depends on chance? By the way, winning in the “Low Season” is not so easy, which will allow you to replay once successfully completed tasks with the same trepidation.

Winning in Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game is hard. Another loss and post-game depression.

Cons

Monotonous gameplay

Missions are related to obtaining items, items are located in locations, so from batch to batch we do the same thing - we go through the decks in locations, there is no other option. The routine can only be dispelled by sudden troubles, which, by the way, “Dead Season” knows how to generously distribute at the slightest opportunity - the death of comrades, betrayal, frostbite, emergency collection of medicines and food, etc. – if it weren’t for this, walking through locations wouldn’t be so nerve-wracking. But, nevertheless, everything is predictable: we go, we find, we bring. In general, the plot let us down - this is not "" for you.

Fight and search, find and hide... and so on every game

Random

The game is full of chance, with complex schemes crumbling as a result of a single roll of the die. It’s better not to make plans at all, but to navigate the situation. This may not be to everyone’s taste, but do not forget that randomness is necessary to create an atmosphere, it pulls the rug out from under your feet, makes you feel uncertainty and fear - they are the ones responsible for the fans in the “Dead Season”.

Lack of organizer

There are a lot of components in the box, and there will be a lot of fussing with them at the preparation stage and after the batch. The case when additional accessories are more a necessity than a wish - I recommend when purchasing, which will increase the cost but save time, and taking into account that it is played for at least a dozen games, it is better to resolve this issue immediately and at the very beginning.

GAMEFIT organizer for the “Low Season”

Link to topic

"Dead Season" is strictly tied to the theme of the zombie apocalypse. You won’t be able to forget about the plot and switch to something else - it runs like a red thread and will remind you of itself everywhere: in the texts, in the design, in its primitive plot. If you are allergic to zombies, then, unfortunately, you will not be able to solve the problem - this is not the euro, where the topic is abstract and you can easily replace the production of nuclear weapons with hamburgers, which we, for example, did in “.”

Are zombies afraid of dogs?
Dead season. Crossroads

Opinion

"Dead season. Crossroads" (Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game) is an excellent game that perfectly combines co-op and America. It captivates, forcing you not just to complete the game task, but to experience it together, to experience collective emotions: danger, fear, anxiety, hope and well-deserved catharsis.

Pros

• Registration
• Localization quality
• Low barrier to entry
• Atmosphere
• Replayability
• Adjustable difficulty level
• No first player problem

Cons

• It's hard without an organizer
• The only strategy is to search for items in locations
• Huge dependence on chance
• Sticking tightly to a zombie theme may seem a little dark

Grade: 10/10

PS. The title for the review translates as “Low season. Crossroads": giving a zombie apocalypse!"