Zombicide is getting a book series next Halloween
Re-animated reading.
Undead-filled dungeon-crawling game Zombicide is being made into a series of novels by Aconyte, adding to the publisher’s already hefty plans for upcoming tabletop books.
Based on the popular board game series about fighting hordes of undead, the Zombicide novel series looks to translate the desperate world of the tabletop franchise into the written word. Featuring a variety of grizzly creatures depicted in miniature form, the Zombicide universe has transported its players from the modern day original to the Middle Ages and even into the far future.
The book series will be set in the multiple “worlds” of the Zombicide series, with Aconyte confirming that the first three novels will based on the classic setting of the original game, as well as the fantasy world of horror game Zombicide: Black Plague and the science-fiction inspired narrative of Zombicide: Invader.
With the standalone expansions of Zombicide Season 2: Prison Outbreak and Zombicide Season 3: Rue Morgue, as well as Zombicide: Green Horde - which sees a return to the fantasy setting of Black Plague, but has players fighting orcs instead of the undead - there are a wide variety of settings that Aconyte could use for inspiration in future novels.
Aconyte will be working in partnership with both CMON - the publisher behind the Zombicide series, as well as Rising Sun and the dungeon-crawling game Massive Darkness - and tabletop titan Asmodee, the company that distributes CMON’s games alongside many others.
The original Zombicide board game was released in 2012 and has one to six players working together to defeat hordes of the undead. In the co-op board game, players become survivors who all have special abilities that they must use to kill the various different zombies that spawn. The more zombies a player character eliminates, the more powerful they become. However, the undead will grow in power alongside players, with the cards pulled to determine their actions becoming ever deadlier.
The announcement that Aconyte is creating a series of books based on the Zombicide universe follows the news earlier this week that the publisher would also be adapting the board game, Terraforming Mars, into a collection of novels. Partnering with tabletop publisher FryxGames, Aconyte is planning to release the first book in the series sometime next summer.
So far, Aconyte has signed on to create novels based on unique deck game Keyforge, the Pandemic series, the Legend of the Five Rings universe, the Arkham Horror Files franchise, and now both Terraforming Mars and Zombicide.
The first entry in the Zombicide series of novels is set to be released sometime around Halloween 2021.