Description

The Road to Ruin co-operative card and dice game for 1 to 4 players. The Road to Ruin is set in the aftermath of a zombie infection outbreak that has left the city overrun by hordes of unstoppable zombies.

Each player controls a survivor of the outbreak. On their turn, the players move their survivor around hidden locations, revealing each location and the level of zombie threat at that location. Each of the locations is unique, and they may grant the survivor more items or weapons, allow the survivor to scavenge the location for equipment, or might be hazards that block the survivor's path. Each of the survivors has a special ability, such as an affinity with a specific type of weapons (melee or ranged), general combat proficiency, extra health, or move versatile movement.

The survivors fight the zombies as they explore each location. In combat, the players roll two six-dice and then use their survivor's weapons and items to attempt to beat the zombie's threat level (which is between 7 and 11). Equipped weapons allow the player to reroll, melee weapons give one reroll and ranged weapons give two rerolls but require matching ammunition. If the survivor fails to fight of the zombie, they are wounded. Each survivor can take on a few wounds before they eliminated. However, survivors can use medical items to remove wounds, and can even discard items in combat to gain more rerolls in a last ditch effort to stay alive.

The goal of the game is to recover multiple supply items and to bring these back to the safe house location before the survivors fall to the zombies. The Road to Ruin comes with four scenarios. The basic scenario 'Supply Run' mentioned above lays out the game's 25 locations in a 5x5 grid and tasks the survivors with recovering six supply items. Other scenarios use different layouts to create varied challenges, including one where the survivors must use a radio at a specific location to call for rescue and then reach the airport location to win. Each of the scenarios also has an easy variation, which usually requires fewer items to be recovered.