Description

Dead By Dawn is the debut title from Retro Active Games

Will you survive the night?
Will you find The Truck Key and escape??
Or will you end up...Dead By Dawn???

"Head for that Farmhouse!" you think to yourself as the moans of the recently undead trail at your heels. You pass a Truck and some gas pumps outside the house...maybe there is a key somewhere? No time now! You just hope to make it inside and find some supplies to survive until the National Guard can sweep through in the next 12 to 24 hours. You see faint other figures on the horizon, assuredly living. Will they be friend or foe?

"Dead By Dawn" is a fast paced, strategic zombie kill-a-thon with a tinge of survival horror. Play with 2-6 players in a time (and part luck) based game of desperation and intuition. Survive until the game ends (Dawn) and have the most kills to win. Or hunt down The Truck Key and escape! But it's a big house, with many locked doors, and the key could be anywhere! You'll have to look for other keys to open any doors along the way, along with gather Weapons and Items to help you survive and win the game!

Gameplay:
Each player gets their own character card with unique abilities for the duration of each game. (Random distribution recommended.) Players attempt to roll and move, while strategically avoiding, fighting, placing, and moving the growing horde of zombies that keep filling the board. Players will attempt to reach the farmhouse at the center of the board with a "KEY" CARD or Character Ability to be able to unlock one of the the many doors in the place.
Inside these rooms, there are plenty of useful cards in the form of Items and Weapons, and sometimes even Key Tokens, to help you gain points via zombie kills or help you gain the upper hand and survive long enough to escape.
But along the way, you may encounter an unlucky or helpful event via the EVENT spaces that litter the board and force players to draw an EVENT CARD- that could change the course of the game!

Games are timed. A 2 player game is an hour, 3-4 player game is 2 hours, and a 5-6 player game is 3 hours. A sand-timer is included to track turns. Players have 2 minutes to complete their turn (barring house rules).

Players have limited inventory space likened to the mechanic present in "Resident Evil" video games. This can be increased by 1 slot by finding "The Backpack" ITEM CARD.

During each standard turn, players take possession of two dice. One black D-6 die with numeric values of 1 through 3 on all faces(these add zombies to the board every turn!). And one blue D-8, 1 - 8 die that is used for player and zombie movement. (Example: player rolls an 8. They may move 8 spaces, but zombies also get to move 8 spaces after player has made their movement. The Zombie Movement can be split any way. (One zombie can move 8 spaces, or two can move 4. etc)
The player also gets use and possession of the sand timer. During a turn, the player starts the timer, rolls and FIRST places zombies, THEN moves their player Pawn, use any cards, equip items, trigger an event/etc, THEN LAST- You may move any zombies on the board (this matches your rolled movement)

To win- survive until time runs out and have the most kills. OR alternatively, hunt down the keys to the truck outside and refill the gas tank and make it to the ESCAPE space at the back of the board. (This ends the game early and regardless of kill score)

—description from the publisher