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This is a repost of my review on BGG, I have been playing this game for a decade and nothing else has come close.
ZoA is the best skirmish game I have ever played, using the savage worlds showdown skirmish system essentially grants rpg level of choice while the means of playing solo/ coop as well as VS was a rarity when it released.
Like most skirmish games you make a gang, of which you have 3 choices - survivors, bandits and the military. Each have unique units and things they bring to play and based on choices will greatly shape the style of the gang itself.
When playing in a campaign each gang draws a place to live which provides the gang a specific perk but while scavenging they can be on the lookout for somewhere new, and between games can assign jobs to any functional members like fixing equipment or a vehicle if you have gotten lucky enough to find a working one.
One thing that really made the game shine is the activation system, ZoA uses a card deck for a lot of the random finds etc, it also uses it for activation order. At the start of every turn each member of each gang draws a card and when everyone has theirs they all get flipped to determine the turn order, if someone draws a joker a random event occurs.
The zombie rules are superb with an increase in danger the more action that happens due to noise any gangmember makes (even getting hurt requires a test to not scream in pain) and some games that start as Vs end up coop by necessity.
The optional "Strain" rules are the icing on the cake, representing the evolutional drive of the virus the strain are a third player (or second if playing solo/coop) force that adds to the standard zombies and have allow you to build "Aberrants" which with the detailed creation system can be any freak zombie or monster from pretty much any franchise you like from the Left for dead Mutant Z's to the entire B.O.W. cast of Resident Evil, all the way up to the Tyrant. In a campaign a Strain player starts with one Abberrant which they gradually evolve as the virus reaches milestones and gradually gains further abberrants which too evolve. Ingame when an Abberrant dies it still draws an activation card as normal and if it gets an Ace will respawn.
The game does have a few conversion issues that we ended up house ruling (Shotguns with slug ammo were a starting weapon and did as much damage as .50 rifles and jamming was way to common on automatic weapons) but largely due to the RPG system the game uses (even watered down) nothing is hard to fix.
I doubt I will ever recommend another game as much as this one, its simply that good if this is the genre you want to play in.
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