Horizon Zero Dawn: The Board Game
review by Alapai
Horizon Zero Dawn: The Board Game is a semi-cooperative tactical action game for 1-4 players from Steamforged Games. In it, you play as a hunter at the Hunter’s Lodge in the world of the Horizon Zero Dawn video game. Each hunt has you tracking and fighting deadly machines, with a group of multiple hunts making up a full game.
Each encounter starts with the setup of the Tracking Phase. In this phase, you set up the grounds you will fight the machines in by selecting a tracking card that shows the layout, terrain, enemies and salvage cards for the encounter and by selecting an event card that will affect the encounter. During the Encounter Phase, you set up according to the tracking card played, then place your hunters onto the board. Each turn, a hunter will take their actions, then the enemies take their actions. Hunters take up to two different actions each activation. These can be to sprint, sneak, craft, distract or attack. Sprinting moves you faster, but alerts nearby enemies to your presence. Sneaking moves you slower, but enemies aren’t alerted. Crafting allows you to put cards back into your deck from your discard pile. Distracting allows you to move enemies towards a distracting sound. Attacking can be ranged or melee. Ranged attacks require line of sight, for an enemy to be within range and to use an ammunition card. Melee attacks require the hunter to be right next to the enemy, either in the same or and adjacent square. Either way, the hunter then creates a dice pool of the dice listed on their relevent cards, then rolls the pool. You add the values from the dice together, subtract the enemy’s armour, then deal the rest as damage to the enemy. You can also target a component on an enemy instead of the enemy itself, eg targeting an enemy’s radar to disable it. Enemies will act differently if they are alert or non-alert. Enemies begin in a non-alert state, but will become alert if they are attacked, take damage, are near another alert enemy, are near a hunter or a hunter sprints past. Non-alert enemies follow a patrol route (like in the video game), moving one square per turn. Alert enemies have behaviour cards that tell you how they work. These will generally ask a question and then follow that up with what the enemy does. For example, Watchers check if non-alert enemies are within 2 squares of them, moving towards the closest non-alert enemy if possible to alert them to hunters or moving closer to a hunter and attacking otherwise. After all the enemies take their actions, you check to see if you’ve failed or succeeded the encounter, moving on to the Campfire Phase if so and moving to the next hunter’s turn otherwise. The Campfire Phase is the time to regroup after the encounter, gaining Sun tokens and upgrading your hunter to get ready for the next encounter. After the last encounter, if you succeeded, then whoever has the most victory points from their Sun tokens is the winner!
Horizon Zero Dawn does a pretty good job of emulating the video game, albeit making you a lot weaker than Aloy, as you play as a generic nameless hunter instead of the hero who is trying to save the world. Machines can be pretty scary, being able to deal a good amount of damage if you’re unable to dodge out of the way. Each machine type will also have their own data card, giving them abilities that resemble gameplay from the video game like radar to make it easier to find you or blaze canisters that you can shoot to light the enemy on fire. As you upgrade your hunter with different cards, you can also change what ammunition you’re using and even add weaves and coils to your armor and weapons with modifications. While the board game doesn’t have the full experience of the video game, it does make the encounters feel like encounters with machines from the video game.
Horizon Zero Dawn has a decent amount of replayability as encounters will vary based on the tracking card, which hunter you play as and of course what cards you draw and what you roll on attacks and evasion. There are also expansions that add more hunters into the mix and expansions that add more machines for more encounters, including massive machines like the Stormbird or Thunderjaw.
If you want a game that gives you the feel of hunting down machines in the world of Horizon, then this game will deliver on that experience. Do keep in mind though that a full playthrough will take a while as you have to go through multiple encounters, each of which has their own unique setup. And while it does feel like the video game, it might not be as appealing to people who don’t know the video game (or dislike the video game) as the theming is pretty on point.
One final thing to note is that Steamforged Games is in the process of making a sequel, featuring Horizon Forbidden West that estimated a release of May 2025. It will play similarly, but is intended to be fully cooperative and should have an expansion to use your Zero Dawn material in the Forbidden West.
Horizon Zero Dawn: The Board Game is available now from our webstore.
