With spooky season upon us, it felt like the right time to check out this cut down version of card game Selfish. Available in a variety of editions, the version of Selfish we’re taking a look at is the Zombie Mini Edition. Is it fun to play? Let’s find out!

How Do You Play A Little Selfish: Zombie Mini Edition?

At the beginning of A Little Selfish: Zombie Mini Edition, each player is a human, trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. Each player is trying to get to the chopper and escape the zombie hordes, but unfortunately, there’s only room for one survivor.

So on each turn, you draw a card from the game deck (which can be supplies or one of a few types of action card), then decide whether to play any actions. These will often hinder your opponents, usually by forcing them to move back a space or perhaps causing them to use or discard supplies. Then, you make the decision whether to move towards the helicopter by discarding two supplies, or staying put and discarding just one of your supplies cards.

If you move forward, you draw a Wasteland card to place in the space you’ve just vacated and follow the instructions on it; sometimes it can give you extra supplies, force you to spend more supplies, do nothing or, in the case of one card in the deck, get you bitten by zombies, at which point you become a zombie yourself. If you run out of supplies to spend when you need to, you also become a zombie. We have to say that we think this is a neat twist; if you become a zombie, you no longer have supplies and your turn consists of you using two actions: moving or biting an opponent.

However, ff you manage to get to the helicopter space as a human, with at least one supplies card, before anyone else, you win.

Is A Little Selfish: Zombie Mini Edition Fun to Play?

The gameplay description makes the game sound more interesting than it actually is, unfortunately. With only four spaces to get through and the chance of that unlockable zombie bite Wasteland card in the deck, you’ll likely either make it to the end with no problem at all or become a zombie completely randomly, through no fault of your own.

It’s also terribly unbalanced and doesn’t seem to have undergone any playtesting; though playing with more than two players allows you to play any number of action cards on your turn and does liven the game up somewhat, the only restriction in a two player game is that you can play only one action per turn.

As the hand size of cards remains the same in games with any number of players and everyone always starts with six supplies, quite often two player games are simply won by the player who took the first turn. Unless that aforementioned zombie bite is drawn.

It’s all a bit of a shame, because the cards are made of a really nice quality cardstock, the illustrations have a really lovely, amusing cartoon-gore style aesthetic and it’s a nicely portable, genuinely compact game too.

The full size Selfish games seem to have spread into new areas, with a Shipwrecked edition, a Space edition and even Marvel and Star Wars versions, along with a bigger Zombie edition too. Are they any more in depth or interesting than this streamlined, Mini Edition? I’d hope so, but can’t comment as I haven’t played them at this stage. One thing’s for sure, given their popularity I would definitely expect that they must be more enjoyable than the Mini Edition.

The Card Gamer Verdict

For more horror-themed card games, check out our list of the best scary digital cards games, and our early look at horror comic book Ice Cream Man: The Mortal Coil Shuffle, which tells its story across a deck of cards!