Play Zombie Dice Online

What Is Zombie Dice?

Zombie Dice is a push-your-luck dice game for two or more players in which you play a zombie trying to eat as many brains as possible without taking three shotgun blasts. Thirteen custom dice sit in a cup. Each turn you draw three at random, roll them, set aside the brains you have eaten and the shotgun blasts you have taken, and then decide: stop and bank the brains, or draw more dice and roll again. The first zombie to 13 brains wins.

What makes Zombie Dice more than a themed version of Pig is the cup. The dice come in three colors, each with a different mix of faces, and you never know which colors you will draw until they are in your hand. A roll of three green dice is a comfortable snack; a roll of three red dice is a firing squad. Managing that visible, changing risk turn by turn is the entire game, and it delivers more tension per minute than almost any other dice game we host. If you enjoy the roll-or-bank rhythm of Farkle, you will be at home here in seconds.

A Short History of Zombie Dice

Zombie Dice was designed by Steve Jackson, founder of Steve Jackson Games and the designer of Munchkin, Car Wars, Illuminati and GURPS. Steve Jackson Games released it in 2010 as a small, cheap, dice-in-a-cup game at a time when the company’s catalogue was dominated by Munchkin expansions. The pitch fit on the label: you are the zombie, the dice are your victims, and the shotguns are the only thing standing between you and dinner.

The game was an immediate hit with retailers and with families, and in 2011 it won the Origins Award for Best Family, Children’s or Party Game. An official iOS app followed in February 2012.

Expansions extended the cup rather than the rules. Zombie Dice 2: Double Feature (2012) added three character dice, the Hunk, the Hottie and Santa Claus, each with its own special faces and abilities. Zombie Dice 3: School Bus added a single twelve-sided yellow die representing a bus full of young brains, with faces that can score several brains at once. Zombie Dice: Horde Edition (2017) bundled the base game with both expansions and replaced the plastic cup with a cloth bag. A deluxe edition is also sold. All of them are built on the same thirteen-dice core that you play above.

Zombie Dice Rules

Components

• 13 custom six-sided dice in three colors:
• 6 green dice — 3 brains, 2 footsteps, 1 shotgun
• 4 yellow dice — 2 brains, 2 footsteps, 2 shotguns
• 3 red dice — 1 brain, 2 footsteps, 3 shotguns
• A dice cup to draw from blind
• Something to track scores (the online game keeps score for you)

Object of the Game

Be the zombie with the most brains when the game ends. A player reaching 13 brains at the end of their turn triggers the final round: every other player gets one more turn so that everyone has had the same number, and then the highest total wins. If the leaders are tied, play another full round.

How a Turn Works

1. Draw three dice from the cup without looking, and roll them.
2. Sort the results. - Brains 🧠 go to your left. They are food; they count at the end of the turn. - Shotgun blasts 💥 go to your right. They are damage. - Footsteps 👣 stay in the middle. The victim got away, so you will roll that die again.
3. Check for death. If you have three or more shotgun blasts in front of you, your turn is over immediately and you score nothing for the turn. Put all thirteen dice back in the cup.
4. Decide. If you are still alive, either stop and add your brains to your score, or keep going. To keep going, pick up your footsteps dice, draw enough new dice from the cup to bring the total to three, and roll them all.
5. Running out of dice. If the cup does not have enough dice to draw, put your brain dice back in the cup first (write down how many brains you have eaten so they still count). Shotgun dice stay where they are.

Brains and shotguns accumulate across every roll of the turn; only footsteps get re-rolled. Stopping is the only way to score, and the decision is all yours.

The Dice

Notice that every color has exactly two footsteps. Across the whole cup, brains, footsteps and shotguns are equally common (26 faces each out of 78), but the shotguns are concentrated in the red dice and the brains in the green ones. That is why a green footsteps die is a gift to re-roll and a red footsteps die is a threat.

Worked Examples

• Opening roll: green 🧠, green 👣, yellow 💥. One brain, one blast, and a green die to re-roll. Since the green footsteps die is the safest die in the cup, roll again: you will draw two more dice and re-roll the green one.
• Second roll: green 🧠, red 💥, yellow 👣. You now have 2 brains and 2 blasts, with a yellow footsteps die waiting. The next roll ends your turn about 70 percent of the time. Stop and bank 2, unless your opponent is already on 13 and you need more.
• A dream turn: green 🧠 🧠, yellow 🧠; then green 🧠, green 👣, yellow 🧠; then green 🧠, red 🧠, yellow 👣. Seven brains and zero blasts after three rolls. The cup now holds 1 green, 1 yellow and 2 red dice. With your footsteps dice being green and yellow, the next draw pulls one die from that red-heavy cup. Stopping on seven is the play; greed here is how big turns die.
• Behind at 6–12 in the final round. Your opponent finished on 12 with 13 not yet reached, so there is no final-round pressure yet, but the computer needs only one good turn. Take an extra roll or two more than usual: banking 3 brains leaves you needing a miracle later anyway.
• Opponent has reached 13 and you have 9. You must score at least 5 brains this turn to win outright (a tie forces another round). Ignore all normal stopping rules; roll until you are ahead or dead.

The Odds: What the Cup Is Really Telling You

Because dice are drawn without replacement from a known cup, every situation has a real, calculable risk. Here are the numbers that matter most.

• Average die. A die drawn from a full cup shows a shotgun 29.5 percent of the time and a brain 37.2 percent of the time. Three such dice give you an expected 1.12 brains and 0.88 shotguns per roll.
• First roll of a turn (three dice from a full cup). No shotguns: 34.7%. Two or more shotguns: 20.8%. Instant death with three shotguns: 2.4%. Three brains: 5.0%. No brains at all: 24.5%.
• Rolling with two blasts already. The next roll ends your turn if any of the three dice shows a shotgun. With three average dice that is 65%. With three green dice it is 42%; with three red dice it is 88%; with one of each color it is 72%. This is why the “stop at two blasts” rule exists.
• Rolling with one blast. You need two or more shotguns on the roll to die. With average dice that is about 21%, low enough that pushing on with a small pile of brains is usually right.
• Rolling with no blasts. Three shotguns on one roll from average dice is only about 2.6%. The early rolls of a turn are close to free; the danger arrives with the second blast.
• Three greens together show zero shotguns 58 percent of the time and three brains 12.5 percent of the time. Three reds together show two or more shotguns exactly 50 percent of the time.

The lesson is that the same number of blasts represents very different danger depending on the colors you are about to roll. Good players count the cup.

Zombie Dice Strategy

1. Two Blasts Means Stop

With two shotguns in front of you, the average roll kills you 65 percent of the time, and the expected gain from rolling on is barely one brain. Bank whatever you have. The only exceptions are when your opponent has already crossed 13 and you are behind, or when you have very few brains and are far enough behind that a small bank does not help.

2. One Blast: Stop at Four or Five Brains

A single blast is survivable, so keep rolling with a small pile. Once you have four or five brains and one blast, the extra brain you expect from another roll is no longer worth the roughly one-in-five chance of losing everything. The computer opponent above stops at five; you can be slightly bolder when you are behind.

3. Count the Colors in the Cup

The cup starts at 6 green, 4 yellow, 3 red. After each draw, look at what is left. If the reds are still in there and the greens are gone, your next draw is far more dangerous than the averages suggest. The game above shows the cup contents for exactly this reason.

4. Look at Your Footsteps Before You Decide

Footsteps dice are re-rolled, and you can see their colors. Two green footsteps dice mean two of your next three dice are the safest dice in the game; two red footsteps dice mean half of your next roll is shotguns. A decision with the same brain and blast totals can flip entirely based on this.

5. Play the Score, Not the Turn

Zombie Dice is a race. Early on, play by the odds. Late in the game, the target changes: if your opponent will reach 13 next turn, banking three brains is worthless and you should push. If you are ahead and close to 13, take smaller, safer turns to force your opponent to gamble.

6. Understand the Final-Round Rule

Reaching 13 does not end the game; it ends the round. In the two-player game above you go first, so if you reach 13 the computer still gets one turn and must beat you. That means reaching exactly 13 with a big lead is safe, but reaching 13 while the computer sits on 11 or 12 invites a comeback. Sometimes it is better to stop at 12 with a big turn than to roll on for 13 and risk a wipeout.

7. Do Not Chase Zero

A turn with zero brains banked is not a disaster; a turn that loses six brains is. If your first roll is three shotguns, nothing was lost. If your third roll gives you two blasts while sitting on six brains, take the six. Big piles are exactly when to become conservative.

8. Average Brains Per Turn Is About Two

In our simulations of 200,000 turns, both the computer’s stop rules and the simple “two blasts or four brains” rule bank about 2.1 brains per turn and bust roughly one turn in five, so a game to 13 usually lasts five to seven rounds. Use that as a yardstick: if you are two full turns (four or five brains) behind with two rounds left, it is time to roll on through two blasts, because the safe play will lose anyway.

Common Mistakes

• Rolling on at two blasts out of habit. It feels timid to stop with two brains, but it is correct.
• Ignoring the color of footsteps. A red footsteps die is half a shotgun.
• Forgetting the cup empties. Late in a turn the cup is small and skewed; the average odds no longer apply.
• Stopping too early with no blasts. With zero shotguns, the chance of dying on the next roll is under 3 percent. Rolling on with two brains and no blasts is almost always right.
• Not adjusting for the endgame. Playing “by the book” when your opponent is on 13 hands them the win.

Variants, Expansions and House Rules

• Zombie Dice 2: Double Feature (2012). Three character dice, the Hunk, the Hottie and Santa Claus, each with special faces that change the odds of a roll. They are added to the standard cup.
• Zombie Dice 3: School Bus. A twelve-sided yellow die representing a school bus full of young brains, with faces worth more than one brain. It is added to the cup alongside the original thirteen.
• Horde Edition (2017). Everything above in one box with a cloth bag instead of the cup.
• Longer race. Play to 20 brains for a game where the cup-emptying rule matters far more often.
• Team play. Two zombies share a score and alternate turns; a good way to teach the odds.
• Sudden death. The first player to 13 wins immediately, with no final round. It removes the comeback rule and favours whoever goes first.

If you like Zombie Dice, the closest games on this site are Farkle and Ten Thousand, which use the same bank-or-roll engine with combination scoring, and Pig, which strips it down to a single die. For a themed dice game with more decisions, try King of Tokyo.

Glossary

• Brain 🧠: A scoring face. Set aside; counts if you stop before dying.
• Shotgun blast 💥: A damage face. Three in a turn ends the turn with no score.
• Footsteps (runner) 👣: The victim escaped. The die is re-rolled on your next roll.
• Cup: The container holding all undrawn dice; you draw three at a time without looking.
• Bank: To stop rolling and add this turn’s brains to your total.
• Final round: The extra turns taken after a player reaches 13 so that everyone has had the same number of turns.

Play Zombie Dice Online on Dice.now

The game at the top of this page is a free fan re-creation of Zombie Dice made for learning and practice. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Steve Jackson Games; you can find the official game, with its original art and expansions, on the Steve Jackson Games Zombie Dice page.

Our version uses the standard cup of 6 green, 4 yellow and 3 red dice with the exact face distribution above. Every roll draws three dice at random from the cup (re-rolling any footsteps dice first), shows them in their colors, and moves brains and shotguns to their piles. The cup contents are always visible so you can count the colors, and the message line tells you the real chance of dying on your next roll once you have two blasts. You play against a computer zombie that stops at two blasts unless it is behind, banks five brains when it has one blast, and pushes harder when you have already reached 13; every one of its rolls and decisions appears in the log. The 13-brain final-round rule and the tie-breaker round are both implemented. Your win-loss record and best single turn are saved on your device only. Draw three dice and start hunting.