2010 Hopefuls - Rookie of the Year - Outbreak Undead

This Gencon was great. I got some amazing auction deals, some even more amazing interviews with game designers, and Andrea picked up her first textbook-sized RPG - Outbreak Undead. She's a fan of the zombie, and when I overlooked what I thought was just another zombie game, she bought into it all the way.

The guys on the Hunters team who created the game really know how to market to a genre that could be considered over-saturated. Their tagline for their game "Your Zombie Survival Plan Will Fail" is gripping and makes you just have to read more. Who doesn't have a zombie survival plan? Who knows it'll probably not work if the worst comes to worst?

The booth at Gencon also had a very fun alternative to the traditional game demo. You could hear about the game and take the quick start version of the game and be on your way. Of course part of the appeal of Outbreak Undead is its utter realism, so instead they had a couple of netbooks around that you could take a personality test with in order to determine your four basic attributes in-game. It was a great gimmick that made you want to stick around and learn more about the impressive book.

The Hunters guys put out one helluva product. From the production design decision of presenting the entire thing on a lined-paper background to make it look like a survivor's notebook to the huge amount of zombified monsters to throw at your players (a zombie rhino? no thanks!), the book is incredibly impressive for a first release. We'll definitely be keeping our eyes on the Outbreak Undead crew in the years to come, eagerly awaiting all the other products we could ever need in a zombie-pocalyse.

Want to know more about the book? Read Andrea's review here. Interested in really good zombie products to inspire your own zombie tabletop game? Look below!