Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/3738954/after-the-virus

Designer: Jacob Fryxelius
Publisher: FryxGames
Artist: Daniel Fryxelius

After the Virus is a cooperative deck builder for 1-3 players where you try to survive different missions in the zombie apocalypse. Truthfully, I’m not a huge deck building fan typically, but I enjoyed this game enough. I didn’t love it, but I had fun and got quite a few plays out of it.

The game play is pretty standard for a deck builder. There is a starting deck, an area deck that has helpful items in it, and a zombie deck. As you play, more and more zombies attack and get added to your deck, and you work to improve your deck, kill the zombies, save survivors, and complete the mission.

One thing I really appreciate about this game is that there are four different characters to play as, and each has a unique starting deck and starting item. There are numerous missions, so I was able to experiment with each character quite a few times.

I do love a good campaign/achievement game, so the mission campaign was a huge bonus and is really the only reason I played as many games as I did. Each chapter of the campaign has multiple missions and increases in difficulty as you progress. Each mission has different rules, unique setups, and specific goals to achieve success. This adds a significant amount of variety and replayability which is needed in a game like this. Mechanically, each game is pretty similar from game to game, but the alterations in the missions add a little zest.

When I say the missions increase in difficulty, I mean it gets REALLY challenging. On the last few missions, after multiple attempts, I eventually had to resign to a loss (death… zombification…) on some of them. Will I try those again someday? Maybe. But towards the end, I had played so much that it was getting a little boring and a little too difficult for my likings.

The deck thinning mechanism in this game is related to zombies. Each round (or wave as they call it), you add more zombies to your deck. Not only does this dilute your deck, but when you draw any number of zombies, you must defeat those zombies that turn, otherwise they attack! I guess this makes it more thematic – there’s a little more at stake. It also creates an interesting dilemma between acquiring cards to add to your deck to extend the waves and maximize the amount of time between zombie additions, while also balancing spending cards to gain those extra cards, essentially speeding up the wave.

As with any card game and deck builder, there is quite a bit of luck in this game. In some missions, bad luck isn’t nearly as hindering and/or it’s easier to mitigate, but there are others where you have to get a specific card from the area deck (or similar), and depending on where it’s located, it’s very possible you will die before even seeing that card (from experience). I’m not a huge fan of luck in more strategic games, so this was a downside for me, but I do understand it’s the nature of the game.

Many people criticize the art in this game, and while it’s not great, I think it’s very fitting for the theme and setting, and I like that it’s different. It makes the game distinguishable, unique, and immersive.

All in all, this is a fun game that doesn’t take up too much table space, plays quickly, and works very well solo. It’s not my favorite game, but for a simple, thematic, exciting deck builder, it’s great! It also has a reasonable price point making it an even more accessible game.