As an author of a popular survival book, i wanted to get people interested in survival in a fun and challenging way. As a long-time fan of board games, i thought that designing a game about a real disaster scenario (in other words, no zombies) would be just the ticket. We got together with other gamers and went to work.

We chose a pandemic, a catastrophe that would wipe out the majority of the population without leaving the entire world a charred ruin. The few survivors (including you) would have to do what real people would have to do if they wanted to survive:

1. Accumulate needed resources:  food, fuel, and weapons
2. Find medical supplies (because people get sick/injured in real disaster scenarios)
3. Find more survivors (because no one can realistically go it alone)
4. Find a safe place to shelter and rebuild

While zombies wouldn’t populate a true survival landscape, other bad guys would. Therefore, we designed a board that had large swaths of land controlled by raiders. These are people who want what you have and aren’t afraid to take it. If you venture into their territory, you can expect to be attacked. Other areas, however, are abandoned and have useful items left by those who did not survive the pandemic. These can be obtained by succeeding at certain challenges.

It’s possible in some cases to avoid most raider areas, but the rewards for surviving attacks are greater than succeeding at simple event challenges.  As you must have accumulated the needed assets before reaching your final destination, the additional rewards add up, but there are risks if you don’t succeed (your character never dies, however, so you’re never out of the game). Most non-raider challenges don’t have penalties; you simply don’t collect the resource there. Almost all of the attacks and some of the events are resolved with dice rolls.  Others require you to make certain decisions to succeed at challenges.

We have built in ways that you can use the assets you’ve accumulated to gain an edge in an attack or event challenge or to move faster to your destinations. This game dynamic forces you to choose whether to stockpile needed assets (necessary to win the game) or use them to succeed at a challenge in order to get even more assets.  You can’t land on your final location without having all the required resources, medical kits, and survivors, so the game is not just a matter of who gets there first.

We also added a deck of bonus cards which can be played to receive a benefit or to slow down an opposing player.  In some cases, these cards may be game changers and could put a player who’s way behind back in contention.  The game often comes down to the wire with more than one player set to win.

We’ve kept the game as family-friendly as possible, and although we set the age limit to 12+, it has been game-tested by 9 year olds.  There is no blood or gore, and introduces critical decision making to younger players.

We hope you’ll enjoy playing doom and bloom™’s survival! It’s been a great experience putting it together, and we believe it brings the concept of disaster preparedness to public awareness in a fun and challenging way. Thanks for checking us out!

Joe and Amy Alton

Creating this game has been a very rewarding experience for me. We put together a game that would be simple enough to pick up and play with little explanation, but complex enough to challenge players to develop their own strategies to win the game. Once you play the game, you see that the road to victory is different every time.  As a lifelong gamer, I can say that this is a game that will be fun for just about everyone.

Jesse Stortini