Zombie Princess review

Zombie Princess is the second game in the Princess series from Bezier Games. Where Rebel Princess took the classic game of Hearts to new heights, Zombie Princess takes on Spades.

For those who didn’t spend afternoons playing cards with their grandma, Spades is a trick-taking game where you have to bid how many tricks you think you are going to win at the start of the round. You score points equal to the number you bid if you got that exact amount, lose points if you go over, or get no points if you are under. It’s a game of probabilities and tactics. Baiting out cards you know can beat you, and playing your trick-winning cards at the right time. 

Zombie Princess is Spades, but with player powers. Each player gets a Princess with either a passive or one-time per round power. These powers allow the players to do things that are unexpected or turn a bad situation into an advantage. In a similar way, each round also has an effect that can change up the game.

The production of Zombie Princess is top tier. The box is the same length and width as its predecessor, but a bit taller. That extra height houses a solid plastic insert, complete with removable bins for the game tokes. The cards are linen finish and while subjective, I think the artwork is gorgeous.

At first pass, the princess and round effects can seem to reduce the strategy of the game and make it more difficult to bid and strategize based on the pure probabilities of a deck of cards. While that may be true, I would argue that it changes the way you have to think about the game. The powers are just another layer of strategy that you get to play with. That isn’t going to work for every player, but for those willing to embrace the chaos, it’s a ton of fun.

There is a reason these classic card games have stood the test of time. Google tells me Spades was first played in the 1930s, and I think it is safe to say it is still being played every single day somewhere by someone. They are just good games. Trick-taking games have been hitting the hobby board game space in a big way for a while now, but most are using the basic trick-taking formula, and then building on it to make something new. We have seen some amazing games come out of that effort, but I don’t see many new takes on more tried-and-true rulesets like Hearts, Spades, Pitch, etc. Bezier Games has cracked the code of the enduring popularity of these classics and put their own spin on them. Zombie Princess is one of those games that feels immediately classic because of its foundation, and invites endless replayability.