Resident Evil Deck Building Game Lookback Review

Resident Evil Deck Building Game is a game I played a lot when I got into the hobby but I didn’t give it the blogging attention it needed.

Now is the time…

In Resident Evil, a deadly virus has caused the dead to rise and infect any living thing they encounter! Fleeing to a mysterious mansion, you must gather any materials you can find to protect yourself. Fight for your survival against a legion of infected beings!

Resident Evil Deck Building Game Overview

As with almost all deck builders, there is an area on the table where cards are placed, this one is called the Resource Area. These piles will change depending on the scenario but there are some basic resources that are in every game.

Next to this is the Mansion deck which is made up of Monster, Items, Powerful Weapons and Events.

You pick a character such as Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine which all have special abilities. They’re all recognisable characters from the game.

You start with a deck with 7x ‘Ammo x 10’ cards, 2x ‘Combat Knives’, and a ‘Handgun’. This deck is shuffled and then players draw 5 cards.

Players take turns playing cards into their play area. On your turn, you have 1 Action, 1 Explore, and 1 Buy.

Actions

An Action is just playing an action card from your hand into your play area and resolving that action. Some action cards give you additional action points allowing you to chain a few cards in one turn.

Some cards, such as Items and Ammo can be played into your play area without using an action point. The same applies when using a Character ability, these are used freely when timing allows on your turn.

To Explore, you will first need to play any Weapons and Ammo cards into play and work out the total damage you can do.

For example, the Handgun needs 20 Ammo which can be from any cards played this turn and it will deal 10 Damage. Each gun you can play can only be activated once each round.

After loading up, you flip over the top card of the mansion deck. If it’s an Infected resolve their ability then see if the damage the player can do exceeds their health.

If the Infected is defeated, it is given to the player and will be worth a number of Decorations (end game points). A Zombie has 20 health and is worth 1 Decoration, a Licker has 40 health and is worth 3 Decorations for example.

If it survives, it activates any ability it may have for surviving an attack. Then it deals damage to the player and is placed at the bottom of the mansion deck. A Zombie deals 20 damage and a Licker deals 30, players have around 80-120 health depending on their character.

Characters

If a character dies they basically skip their next turn and come back with a reshuffled deck and reduced maximum health.

Your character’s available abilities depend on your current level which is determined by the number of decorations you have. As you gain Decorations you ‘Level Up’ unlocking more abilities.

You can use Gold to buy from the stacks of cards available in the resource area. Players only have one Buy action but cards and abilities could give a player more ‘Buys’ in a turn.

Bought cards go into the discard pile, as do all played and unplayed cards at the end of the round. You draw 5 cards and play goes clockwise.

The deck has a boss, which I believe is Uroboros Albert, and once he is defeated the game will end. The player with the most Decorations will win.

Theme

I really like the Resident Evil video games, especially the early ones. Those where each bullet was a precious resource and every single zombie was a difficult choice to kill or not to kill.

Proper survival horror. This game copies it well.

Setup

Like a lot of deck builders that have fixed stacks of cards, setup is simple. Especially if you put everything away properly at the end of a game.

It is still a pain though 🙂

Components & Artwork

The cards are cards but the artwork is really nice. It looks very similar to screenshots from the actual game, well, the 2019/2020 versions anyway.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

It is fairly simple to teach. You can always start with a simple scenario with basic cards. But every card you buy is face up and every mansion card is revealed face up so you can talk new players through a turn.

Having to stick to 3 different action points as well as spending 2 different resources is more advanced for a deck-building game really.

Resident Evil Deck Building Game Summary

This is far from a standard deck-building game. Two spendable resources (Ammo & Gold) and three gameplay resources (Action, Explore, Buy) to track… It does make turns quite slow as players try and maximise Actions to get as much damage up as possible before exploring.

There is a bit of luck too. You have to draw Weapons with enough Ammo to fire them. Then you hope to draw a low enough health baddie from your explore action.

But there is a tonne of variability, not just from the cards but from the game modes too. These change the way you play and what happens if you die. In the Outbreak expansion, you can come back as Infected for example…

However, this wasn’t really a readily available game. I believe initially there were issues with Bandai licensing in the UK so it was only available via import. I’m not sure what happened since but it’s still scarce and sells for well over RRP.

But it is good fun. It would 100% be in my collection if I didn’t already have a few deck builders that are more fun to play, or if it was just cheaper. But Legendary Encounters: Firefly is a better system and Hero Realms has much better (and quicker) gameplay.

So if you like deck building, like a challenge or even want a good Resident Evil themed game, this is a good one.

Jesta ThaRogue