When I was fourteen, my friend Darin called me up and said, "Hey, a bunch of guys are coming over to play games. Do you want to come?"

"Games?" I said, putting down my comic book, "like Monopoly?" I snorted the geek snort. "Huh huh huh no. Games are lame."

Darin, who is two years older than me and about a lifetime wiser, patiently said, "no, not like Monopoly. We're playing games that are, well, different than that. They're kind of geeky. Have you ever heard of Illuminati, or Diplomacy?"

I told him that I hadn't, but I was intrigued, so I accepted his invitation and was introduced to a whole new world, where Steve Jackson, and Games Workshop reigned supreme.

It was also the day I officially became a complete and total geek.

This week's Geek in Review looks at a few geeky games with a horror theme, that are great anytime, but perfect for playing around Halloween.

Zombies!!!

Zombies!!! from Twilight Creations pays homage to the great zombie films of George A. Romero, when the undead slowly and relentlessly shambled toward our heroes, who came up with clever and increasingly gory ways to defeat them. Who knew that there were so many different ways to whack a guy on the head?

Zombies!!! takes place in a small town, which the players build from a deck of map tiles as the game develops. Most of the tiles contain streets and intersections, but some tiles contain locations, like the sporting goods store, the gas station, the hospital, or the special helipad where players ultimately want to go to win the game.

Players can win the game by making it to the helipad, or by wasting twenty-five zombies. Both of these objectives sound far, far easier than they actually are. The zombies are everywhere, and until players pick up some weapons, like a molotov cocktail from the gas station or a chainsaw from the lawn and garden center, they are very hard to beat. Just like the movies, it's not that they're tough, but that there are so damn many of them. Also, the other players can screw with you by playing cards that paralyze you with fear, double the amount of zombies in a building, or mysteriously bring all the zombies you just killed back to life.

Zombies!!! comes with plastic figures to represent the players and the zombie horde. The players are all little shotgun-holding guys who would be sort of macho and threatening if they weren't so brightly colored and adorable with their little guns and their tough guy face. You're so tough! Yes you are! You're going to go and blast all those zombies, aren't you? Aren't you?! Who wants a biscuit? Who wants a biscuit?

Erm. Sorry.

There are also a hundred plastic zombie figures, each with one arm reaching out in the universal zombie gesture for "braaaaaiinnnssss." They're be really scary if they weren't so damn cool. (Note: you'll want to take some of these zombies and attach them to your monitor or desk, because they look neat. Don't do this, because you'll eventually run out of zombies for your game. Yes, you will use all 100 zombies in a five player game.)

You will die in this game, probably multiple times, which gets kind of annoying, and is one of the game's weaker aspects. When you die, you go back to the center of town where you started, and you lose half of the zombies you killed.

The game's biggest drawback is how long it takes to play, and the absence of any real strategic challenge. It takes between two and three slow-moving hours to complete a game, and you really need to get lucky with the dice rolls to have any chance of winning. However, with some appropriate music and its inspiration playing on a nearby television, Zombies!!! is an entertaining addition to any geek's game day.

Spooks

Spooks, from Steve Jackson Games, is a beautifully illustrated card game where players try to outrun their friends -- and the spooks -- in a haunted house. If Zombies!!! moves at the speed of Night of the Living Dead, Spooks moves at the speed of 28 Days Later; an average game can be finished in less than ten minutes.

It's a trick-taking game, where players try to outrun various creepy spooks by playing the cards out of their hand. There is a strategic element, which will make a certain brand of geek very happy, but isn't necessary to enjoy the game, which becomes insanely fun when the alternate rules are applied. This is also a game that is very family and kid friendly, so all you geeks out there who have little geeklings of your own may want to pick this up.

Give Me The Brain!

Give Me The Brain!, designed by James Earnest and released by Cheapass games, is a card game that isn't exactly horror-themed, but does have zombies in it. Who work in a fast food restaurant. Seriously.

The players are the zombies, who are just trying to finish their shift so they can go do . . . uh . . . whatever zombies do when they're not working in a fast food restaurant, I guess.

Players draw cards which represent one or two-handed jobs they must complete so they can empty their hand and win the game. Some of these jobs can't be finished unless the player has The Brain, which is represented by a d6 (get a pink one if you can, for, uh, realism) and each task has a different difficulty level reflected by the number you must roll better than on the d6 to complete it. The players in the game have ample opportunity to screw with each other by playing cards that force them to give up the brain, miss a turn, draw cards, or trade cards with other players. There is even a card that specifically exists to prevent its victim from winning.

An average game takes about twenty minutes to play, and because it only takes about ten minutes to learn, this is a great game to use if you're hoping to introduce non-geeks to the world of geeky games.

There are many other geeky horror-themed games that I haven't mentioned, the most obvious being the Vampire and Werewolf LARP[1] games, as well as hard to find classics like TSR's Vampyre and Steve Jackson's Undead. Board Game Geek has a fantastic and nearly definitive geeklist of games for those of you who are interested in exploring this genre further, but be warned: these are gateway games. If you find yourself carrying a d20 in your pocket, "just in case" and frequently trying to Sense Motive or Charm Person, you may want to seek professional help.

[1] I have nothing against you LARPers. Just keep your damn cloaks and combat boots off my lawn, and we're cool.

Wil Wheaton is an actor, writer, and life-long geek. He lives in Los
Angeles with his wife, kids, and a bag of polyhedral dice, in a house
built out of Magic cards.