Paella is a rice dish that originated in Valencia. Tho' outside Spain it's perhaps best known as a seafood dish, it was originally made with rabbit and chicken, and you can concoct a paella with many different ingredients. In this set collection card game designed by Enric Aguilar Almodóvar, the 2-5 players are competing to be the first to collect five ingredient cards. Publishers Zombi Paella have an obvious fascination with zombies but, other than that, it's not at all clear why zombies should feature in the name of the game, tho' it does provide an excuse to showcase the cute cartoon artwork of Esther Méndez, whose zombies reminded us of the characters in Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. Parents need not hide this game away from their children: there's nothing here that will provoke night terrors.
The game is played with a deck of 108 cards, tho' you fillet some out if you're playing Zombie Paella with just two players. There are treasure, battle and special cards, and the ingredient cards that you need to collect for the win are all included among the treasure cards. Players start off with starting hands of seven cards but any that are treasure cards must be placed face up in a tableau in front of them. Likewise all treasure cards you subsequently draw. Some will give you a permanent effect and some will be available to be discarded to draw more cards. Zombie Paella is a 'take that' game where players will be trying to steal treasures - and, specifically, the all-important ingredient cards - from each other, and they'll be doing that by playing battle or special cards from their hand.
The net result is a light but thoroughly entertaining game. It's often worth husbanding your more powerful cards even if that means conceding battles you might expect to win. There are some special cards that can be played to give you double turns and there are a couple of ways of using special cards to win with just four ingredients, and in our plays at Board's Eye View we've seen players pull off some cleverly sneaky wins by using these cards in combo to snatch a 'sudden' win that avoided the inevitable blocking that accompanies early attempts to win through the steady build up of ingredients.
Zombie Paella plays comfortably in around 20 minutes so makes for a fun filler. Adding a copy to your collection is a 'no brainer' - even tho' the zombies in this game have no interest at all in chomping on brains.