DC's Zombies Are Coming To A Tabletop Near You

Welcome to Cardboard Cinema, an ongoing series where we look at board games inspired by or connected to our favorite media. 

It's spooky season, so what better way to celebrate Halloween than with a handful of spooky board game adaptations for your 2024 wishlist? This month's standouts include a competitive "Saw" game and the much-anticipated adaptation of DC Comics's "DCeased" series. We also look at a few pieces of big news in the tabletop community. Did you know that Zack Snyder was sort-of secretly working on a tabletop adaptation of "Rebel Moon"? You'll have to read on to find out how that went sideways!

After recently celebrating its five-year anniversary, internet streaming service Dropout has proven itself a mover and shaker in the tabletop space. While shows like "Game Changer" and "Um, Actually" dominate TikTok algorithms — or at least my TikTok algorithm — it's the platform's commitment to high-quality actual plays that prove some of the most exciting things happening on "television" involve little more than a table and a group of friends. This brings us to "Burrow's End," the latest limited series in the growing empire of "Dimension 20" seasons built on the "Dungeons & Dragons" roleplaying game.

In interviews, the cast has described films like "The Secret of NIMH" and "Watership Down" as inspirations for the new season, which pretty much guarantees a bunch of episodes filled with nothing but nonstop heartbreak. Those are the kind of formative, heartbreaking works of animation that either endear you to a medium or turn you off it forever, which suggests that "Burrow's End" will probably offer a similarly tragic core memory for viewers new to roleplaying games.

But one thing's for sure: Dimension 20 has held nothing back when it comes to talent. Aabria Iyengar and Brennan Lee Mulligan are two of the industry's most respected GMs and co-creators of the wildly popular "Worlds Without End" podcast. No matter how heavily the new series leans into the animated tragedy of its inspirations, you can be sure that this will be a powerful and beautiful story from the first dice roll to the last.

These days, it seems like every popular film franchise has a tabletop adaptation. My own collection of licensed games includes everything from "Evil Dead" to "Terminator" to "The Walking Dead." But with the market for roleplaying games bigger than it's ever been, it's not surprising to see studios explore titles for new releases as well. So pick your surprise: that Netflix was working on a roleplaying game for the upcoming sci-fi fantasy blockbuster "Rebel Moon" with direct input from Zack Snyder himself, or that publisher Evil Genius Games is now suing the entertainment company after Netflix pulled the plug?

If you pay attention to tabletop licenses, then Evil Genius Games is a pretty big name. Under the umbrella of their Everday Heroes core roleplaying system, the publisher has released licensed modules for a variety of '80s and '90s movies, including "The Crow," "Total Recall," "Universal Soldier," and several more. But unlike those titles — which were standalone modules for an existing system — the Evil Games adaptation of "Rebel Moon" seemed to offer a holistic, ground-up experience for new players.

According to reports from sites like io9 — there's only so much legalese I'm willing to wade through for a defunct tabletop title — Netflix claims a breach of contract while Evil Genius Games claims damages for lost income from other projects. The complaint also notes that the original deliverables included 400-plus pages of resources for players and 300-plus pages for GMs. If that feels like a lot of effort for a single game ... well, the publisher agrees with you. But then again, it wouldn't be a Zack Snyder production without a little a little off-field conflict.

Do you want to play a game? No, like, an actual tabletop game? If your biggest frustration with the "Saw" franchise is the lack of ways to recreate the experience at home — shout out to 2009's surprisingly well-reviewed video game adaptation — then take heart. In conjunction with the release of the latest "Saw" movie, tabletop and collectibles publisher Iconiq Studios has announced a new Kickstarter for "Saw: The Jigsaw Trials."

Not a lot is known about the game yet — board game publication Dicebreaker has a few details and photos about the puzzle-based health system and the thousands of traps available in-game — but a "Saw" board game makes a decent amount of sense. Escape room and investigation-style board games have grown in popularity over the past few years, providing a collaborative experience for people who want to participate in their own mysteries. You wouldn't need to reinvent the wheel too hard to craft an escape room-style tabletop game that leans heavily into the license.

Of course, with any adaptation, movie fans would do well to check the pedigree of both the publisher and the designer (or designers). This is not the first Kickstarter rodeo for publisher Iconiq Studios, who previously funded both a tabletop and a card game based on "They Live." "They Live: Assault on Cable 54" presented fans of John Carpenter's film with a rough recreation of the film narrative, opening the door to a wild range of possible outcomes. Maybe you do want to play a game after all.

If there's one thing DC Comics loves, it's pitting superheroes against monsters. In 2021, the comic publisher tapped superstar writer James Tynion IV for "DC vs. Vampires," a limited series that depicted the worldwide infiltration and conversion of superheroes by a vampire cabal. But the real breakout monster series was "DCeased," the 2019 series from DC Comics that depicted an interstellar war between Earth's remaining heroes and undead superpowers from across the known universe.

And if you've been waiting for your chance to wage war against your favorite undead DC characters, then good news: CMON Limited is bringing "DCeased" to a tabletop near you. Back in September, CMON released a teaser trailer for the game, revealing plans for an undead Superman in keeping with the original run of the "DCeased" series. A project page on Kickstarter soon followed, with CMON also offering a developer's diary on their website with updates on the character selection and gameplay.

Back in 2022, CMON broke records with their Kickstarter for "Marvel Zombies – A Zombiecide Game," earning over $9 million dollars from 28,000 backers. That game reworked the popular (and extremely versatile) "Zombiecide" series for the Marvel universe, pitting a handful of surviving heroes against a wealth of superpowered zombies. But the biggest question of all remains: with two zombie comic book franchises operating under the same system, is it possible that both "DCeased" and "Marvel Zombies" will offer crossplay compatibility? We shall find out soon enough.