As Jane Austen might well have put it, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a game in possession of a good following must be in want of zombies. Love' em or loathe 'em, along with Cthulhu, they eventually seem to make their way into most long-running game franchises...
Good Cop Bad Cop was designed by Brian Henk and Clayton Skancke, with art by Dwayne Biddix. It was originally published by Overworld Games in 2014. Good Cop Bad Cop is a hidden role game where, as you might guess from the title, the 4-8 players are either good cops or bad cops as determined by the majority of the three Integrity cards in front of them. One player will also be the Agent (Good) and another will be the Kingpin (Bad) regardless of their other Integrity cards. Integrity cards start off face down but get revealed through the course of the game. The original game came with a handful of Equipment cards that triggered particular effects, and you could take a gun and ultimately shoot another player - initially wounding them if they were the Agent or Kingpin and eliminating them if they were just a Good Cop or Bad Cop; the Good Cops won if they eliminated the Kingpin; the Bad Cops won by eliminating the Agent.
That was back in 2014. Since then we've seen several expansions and revisions. The Bombers and Traitors expansion replaced all the Integrity cards with a new set that included knife and bomb icons. Now you weren't necessarily just a Good Cop or a Bad Cop: if all three of your Integrity cards had knife icons, you were also a Traitor, with your own distinct win conditions. If you had three bomb icons, you were a suicide bomber! This expansion also envisaged Good Cop Bad Cop being played with just three players, tho' it remained at its best at higher player counts. The Undercover expansion added 'undercover assignment' cards giving each player a special ability for as long as at least one of their Integrity cards remained face down. Both expansions added a slew of extra Equipment cards - the literal game changers that have always been at the heart of this lively hidden and sometimes not-so-hidden role deduction game. Meanwhile Overworld Games has also transformed into Pull the Pin Games.
It was perhaps inevitable that Pull the Pin Games would eventually add zombies into the mix. This new expansion, compatible with all previous editions of Good Cop Bad Cop, includes some zombie-specific Equipment cards to shuffle into the growing Equipment card deck. The zombies mostly kick in when a non-Agent or Kingpin player is shot. Where previously that would mean player elimination, it now means the player continues as a zombie - in effect, a new additional team competing with both the Good Cops and Bad Cops. Once you're a zombie, you use 'Zombie Arms' rather than a gun in order to target another player and ultimately grab and bite them. If you bite another Good Cop or Bad Cop, they too will become a zombie. If a zombie bites a wounded Agent or Kingpin, then the zombies win.
Player elimination was never a major issue with Good Cop Bad Cop because the game plays quickly and eliminated players rarely found themselves sitting out for more than 5 minutes but the mere notion of player elimination does put off some players. If you're one of them then you'll especially welcome the new zombie mechanic. From our initial plays at Board's Eye View, its main impact, however, is in shifting the dynamics of play. Shoot another player and you are creating another competing force, and one that can spread like a contagion. We've found that with the prospect of zombies in the mix, players tend to be noticeably less trigger happy: better the Good Cop or Bad Cop you know than the zombie who can potentially snatch victory by snapping their jaws on either the Agent or Kingpin... And once again, the Equipment cards add hugely to the fun. These include cards that have the effect of de-zombifying a zombie (bringing them back as a plain old Good Cop or Bad Cop). Be warned tho' - you can't count on a specific card turning up when you need it: if you're adding this new expansion to those from all the previous expansions (or from the revised Equipment in the 2019 Third Edition), you'll be shuffling those zombie Equipment cards into a now quite hefty deck, so there could well be cards that simply don't get drawn in your game.
Along with a new 4th Edition of Good Cop Bad Cop, Good Cop Bad Cop: Zombies is coming to Gamefound on 11 July. Click here to get a notification when the campaign kicks off, and Pull the Pin Games are offering a free game mat to backers who use the pre-launch link to follow the campaign.
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