Modern (comedic, horror, zombies)
Alliterated Games
2008
Complexity: 3
So it occurs to me that my ‘horror’ game reviews have been almost entirely focused on splatterpunk/slasher/gorefest type games and not suspenseful, psychological, ‘real horror’ games. I have no plans to change that.
Cannibal Contagion is a zombie survival game, although it specifies that it can be about other things than zombies—provided said things are effectively zombies, like the demons in Demons—but really, it’s clearly intended as a zombie game. It’s probably worth noting that while this is a digest-size book, it also weighs in at a meaty—pun intended—200+ pages.
Character Creation: 3/5
Characters have four attributes, which players assign values of 1, 2, 3, and 4 as they desire. Players must also select a ‘Psychotrigger’—a thing which may cause their character unusually high levels of stress—a ‘Mojo Power’—is it weird that this is the second game I’ve reviewed this month that has a ‘mojo’ element?—and choose their gear—which is more-or-less defines as a thing that could have a mechanical in-game effect, the book even gives “nice rack” as an example, which could reasonably be used to distract or bludgeon your foes. Players also most select another player as their character’s ‘Mad Half,’ which will be discussed later. Aside from that it’s just the regular minutiae: name, goals, etc.
Mechanics: 2/5
At its most basic level, the system is fairly simple. The game-master narrates a scene, and when the players want to, they can challenge that narrative. So if a zombie's running over to eat your character’s meaty bits, it’s your responsibility to say “but before it does I pull out my knife and stabbeth it in the face.” Any time a player challenges the game-master—or another player—it initiates one of two types of test using a standard deck of playing cards. For situations where the character is not directly opposed—busting down a door, looking for items, playing a sad song on the harmonica, etc.—they make a ‘Quickie’—which I really hope wasn’t intended as a sex joke—requiring them to draw a number of cards equal to their relevant attribute, plus bonus cards for gear, allies, or from their mad half—yeah, that part’s still coming—with success if they draw an ace or face card. Opposed tests are known as ‘Showdowns’ and require both opposing sides—usually player and game-master—to both draw cards equal to the number of the relevant attribute, with the same bonuses as before—and special ones for the game-master which will come up later. The initiating player puts down a card, then the other player must put down a higher-value card, this goes back and forth until no higher card can be played with success going to the player of the highest card and, if applicable, damage being dealt equal to the total number of cards played. Right about here is where the rules stop being simple. Instead of damage, aces and face cards can be exchanged for ‘Facts’—little bits of bonus success narration—or survival tokens. Survival tokens are gained at the beginning of each scene, as previously detailed, and several other ways, and can be used to heal damage, reduce ‘Crazy-Go-Psycho’ progression—which I seem to not even have mentioned yet—buy gear, resist damage, and some other stuff I’m forgetting and/or don’t feel like listing. Still with me? Actually I don’t really care. Now I get to the mad half, which is another player that the player must get permission from to add bonus cards to a check. Each card gained this way also makes the player gain 1 crazy-go-psycho point, in addition to a narrative price determined by the mad half. Gaining crazy-go-psycho points make a character descent into further stages of madness, which give the mad half more and more control over that character’s actions. Now at this point you may be thinking “wow, that sure took a sharp turn away from simple,” and I’ll remind you that I haven’t even gotten to the game-master specific rules yet.
Once again we start with good intentions, monsters and such are all reduced to abstract “Threats.” A zombie can be a threat, a group of zombies can be a threat, a burning building can be a threat, basically anything that can harm the characters in some way is a threat. Threats are separated into a few ‘roles,’ which define their ‘Threat Level’—basically the threat’s hit points— and how many cards they get in a showdown. Now of course this is a really nice idea since it reduces big blocks of statistics to “it’s about this powerful” and leaves the rest up to narration. But of course you know that there’s going to be something stupid thrown on top of it, because that seems to be this game’s general theme. That something is ‘Adversity Tokens.’ Said tokens are used by the game-master to give extra card to threats, reduce damage dealt to a threat, take away equipment from the characters, or just give everyone a crazy-go-psycho point for lolz. Oh and most importantly, to buy threats. Yes, the game-master has a currency, which they must use to put threats in the game. It seems like in theory this is supposed to limit the game-master’s power, but common sense is what’s supposed to limit the game-master’s power. Also, it doesn’t do that, adversity tokes are gained at the beginning of every scene, with no limit on total tokens held, no limit on tokens used at once, and no requirement to use them at any time. So really there's nothing stopping an unscrupulous game-master from running a few filler scenes to stockpile tokens then spending them all at once on some unbeatable horror that wipes out the party—incidentally, gaining adversity tokens for each character killed—and then claiming it’s not their fault since they were “just following the rules bro” before flying off to tell everyone on Twitter about their “Epic TPK.”
Oh, you thought I was done? Well how could I talk about Cannibal Contagion without mentioning its most notable feature, the contagion. After all “the mechanics are built entirely around
the concept of survival against the dangers of an infectious enemy, ” and “[a contagion] should be a core feature of every game of Cannibal Contagion, as many of the rules revolve around it.” So, sorry but it looks like this is going to be another huge section with all the intricate infection rules, I mean the whole system is built around them. When a character takes encounters an infectious threat they may gain ‘Infection Tallies’ which they can attempt to resist by spending a survival token. Infection tallies can injure characters every scene or just kinda accumulate, either way at some specified point the character turns into a zombie—or martian or whatever. Oh, actually that was quite short and could be tacked onto almost any system. Also, just a side note, I couldn’t actually find where it’s specified how to determine how many infection tallies are dealt, but I’m not going to re-read a 200-page book just to be sure.
Writing and Presentation: 3/5
When it comes to zombies you really have two options: call them zombies, or don’t. If you’re going to use ‘the z word’ then you don’t really need to call them ‘ghouls’ or ‘contagious cannibals.’ Yes, in prose you may want to switch things up a bit, but even then switching back and forth between a handful of terms just seems indecisive. Aside from that, the writing is overall good. There’s a definite attempt to keep the tone ‘fun,’ so it fits the implied tone of the game. One thing that does bug me is the labeling of damage as ‘Hurtin’.’ It's just one of those things where it just feels like the designer thinks they’re too special and clever to use standard terms like ‘damage’ or ‘game-master’. Another thing that's more than a little off-putting, is that the recommended way to introduce new players to the game is the most condescending way possible. It basically states that you should try and humiliate them in front of the other players for not knowing the rules.
In terms of layout my only complaint is that they could have made more of an effort to distinguish the beginning of sections within chapters. As mentioned, this is a fairly thick book, and it does do a good job of directing you to where you need to go to find information on concepts that are bought up outside their section.
The book has some rather nice black and white illustrations, even nicer is that said illustrations mostly feature the four sample characters—pro tip: using the same characters in multiple illustrations makes the art look extra consistent. Also, near the front of the book you’ll find illustrations of the characters at the start of the zombie outbreak, and near the end illustrations of them each meeting their end, with the final illustration showing them as zombies, this is a really nice touch that I like a lot. One thing that does annoy me is that some blood splatter has been added to two of the character illustrations, which is completely inconsistent with the art style and the only thing in the whole book that’s in color.
Content: 2/3 [•]
Given the abstract foundation of the game there’s not that much content to have—no need for comprehensive monster or equipment lists since both of those things are mechanically abstract. That being said, there are a number of sample and ‘alternate’ threats—as you may recall it is insisted upon that this isn’t just a zombie game.. and oddly also that it’s the only game built from the ground up to be a zombie survival game. There’s also a complete sample scenario and lengthy advice for creating threats and scenarios and running the game.
Final Remarks
Most games tend to be either precise and rules-heavy, or abstract and rules-lite. Cannibal Contagion has the odd distinction of being abstract and rules-heavy. It has this good abstract foundation, but just piles rules on top of it until it collapses. Overall it kinda feels like the designer just didn’t know when to stop adding things. The funny thing is that the game is actually recommended to be played as a quick ‘pick-up’ game, and this is not a game to just jump into casually. Sure, once everyone knows the rules, things should more-or-less run smoothly, but getting to that point will take a bit of work.
Base Points: 8
Character Creation: 3/5, Mechanics: 2/5, Presentation: 3/5
Adjustments: +0
Setting: N/A, Writing: +0, Content: +0
Overall Score 53% (8/15 Points)
Kinda like All Flesh Must Be Eaten, except more complicated and not as good.
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