Dying Light’s parkour-loving zombie killers will roam an entire modular city block in the official board game
Roll dice for both combat and wall jumping across a city with a vicious day/night cycle and UV components.
When Dying Light released in 2015, popular culture was already swarming with zombie media and were feeling a bit burned out, but the video game offered a fresh twist to the undead apocalypse with its urban exploration via parkour stunts and the player’s delicate balancing of factions within the last city on earth.
Dying Light’s official board game adaptation, a joint effort between Class Cannon Unplugged and Techland, just hit Kickstarter on February 27th in hopes of funding a fairly ambitious recreation of Villedor where players can run, scramble, jump, shoot and loot to their heart’s content. A double-sided board and three-dimensional buildings produce an impressive city block and offer plenty of space for missions, resource hunting and good old-fashioned parkour.
Speaking of which, the player-controlled Runners will use what the press release called “an innovative action dice system”, which is pretty empty. Luckily, the campaign page fills in the details: once rolled, a Runner’s action dice can be assigned to an action track to sprint distances, vault barriers, jump across gaps and fight any foe - living or otherwise - that stands in their way.
Performing four or more actions in a single turn will earn that player a momentum die, which can be fed into gear and equipment to activate bonuses. But there’s a downside, as every extra action will further draw the attention of any nearby Infected. You can’t run both fast and silently at the same time, but in a pinch those dice tracks can be fatigued for a burst of adrenaline that will stagger your body later on. Choosing when to push the dice is a key to victory.
This cooperative board game is designed by Przemysław Zub and Bartosz Tomala and will tell a mission-based narrative tale for one to four players. As in the video game series, survival is only half the fight - scrounging for resources, infrastructure and favours for the various factions ruling Villedor’s safe zones
One of the coolest features of Dying Light’s board games, which may or may not actually play out during sessions, involves how the designers have translated the specific dangers of day and night within the setting. The Infected are more active, hungry and stronger at night, but sometimes the only way player-controlled Runners can accomplish their goals is waiting for the sun to drop. Stickers and certain components that glow under UV lights are included in the box to sell this effect. It makes for a striking promotional image, but whether the gameplay is compelling remains to be seen.
Plenty of more rules and component explanations are available on Dying Light: The Board Game’s Kickstarter campaign, which runs through March 20th. It’s one of those campaigns that larger companies and video game adaptations tend to produce that’s chockablock with miniature counts, stretch goal hype, timed exclusives and those long, scrolling images of everything you’ll get if you back at the largest level.
But if you enjoyed Glass Cannon Unplugged’s treatment of Frostpunk and Apex Legends, Dying Light seems to be another in that design vein. Physical boxes are expected to begin shipping to backers in June 2025.