Don’t Let Them Get Together! – Final Girl – Terror From the Grave Review

After going through a bunch of Final Girl feature films and playing them enough to review them, it can get a bit stale after a while.

Same location, same killer, rinse and repeat.

That’s what makes these Final Girl vignettes kind of cool. No location comes with them so you have to use a location you already have.

Terror From the Grave brings zombies into the Final Girl universe, and they are relentless as they typically are in films.

This vignette was designed by Evan Derrick and A.J. Porfirio with art by Tyler Johnson.

It was released in 2023 by Van Ryder Games.

Unlike the Birds vignette, this one does have them actually going after you rather than spreading like a virus.

It’s also quite interesting for another reason: Vehicle Action Cards!

Yes, that’s right.

For any location in the first two series, there is a vehicle action card that you may be able to find and use to help wipe out the zombies.

Let’s see how all of this works.

As with any of the vignettes, since there isn’t a “killer board,” the bloodlust track is made up of two cards smashed together.

The Zombies themselves are pretty ordinary and not much trouble.

They appear in all of the exit spaces to start with.

They are also considered Minions, which mean they do a minion action, victims will follow you into their space, and you can kill whole swaths of them in one shot (ok, only two, for reasons I’ll give in a minute) because each damage done in an attack will kill a minion, rather than concentrating on only one target.

Also, during the Killer phase, they will move one space toward an adjacent victim/Final Girl, and then a new zombie will spawn in one of the exit spaces.

However, if they are not adjacent to anybody, they will panic instead, sometimes staying where they are if they roll a panic number that doesn’t move them.

This simulates the aimless rambling before acquiring a target and charging mechanic from all of those zombie movies.

They are slow, though, so while they will ramble as a Minion action, they ignore all foot symbols on Terror cards.

But not knives…they will attack if they’re in a space with you or a victim.

What happens when they all get together, though?

That’s when you get a horde.

And now you got a killer!

Whenever three or more zombies are in the same space at the end of the Killer phase, a horde forms.

Initially, a horde has 3 health (unless there were more than 3 zombies that formed it).

However, if a zombie ever happens to be in a horde’s space, it’s absorbed. It goes away and you increase the horde’s health by one.

Worse yet, if you have managed to let three hordes form and another one forms, you lose!

Just like the birds, you need to manage the zombies, at least a little bit.

Hordes do have a killer action of moving (speed is based on bloodlust) and then attacking, so you do have to watch out for them.

Also, if a zombie kills a victim, the victim is replaced by a zombie in addition to raising bloodlust, so that could form a horde right there! Of course, a horde killing a victim will just add to the horde’s health.

Things can get messy really quickly with zombies if you don’t manage them right.

You win the game by killing all of the zombies and hordes, so it’s almost impossible to win before the finale unless you get really lucky.

That’s because none of the finales have a spawn action on them.

No more zombies will come after it’s revealed.

By that time, I hope you’re ready.

Because they can be pretty nasty!

They’ve All Been Bitten is rough because it replaces all victims still on the board with zombies!

A.J. Porfirio has clarified that, even though it says they’ve been bitten, they are only replaced, not killed.

So no bloodlust increase unless you want to increase the difficulty level (because logically it would make sense that they were killed and changed).

When I’m Overwhelmed is revealed, you suddenly lose your Final Health token and have a white one instead. That means no coming back from the dead!

Since I so rarely do anyway, that’s not a huge loss.

Their Numbers are Endless, though, is just brutal.

If you have moved into an enemy’s space (or been unable to move out of it), you lose a heart at the end of the Action phase.

You have to make them come to you in that case.

The Dark Powers are pretty bad too, and one of them cost me the game!

Legion just increases the number of zombies spawned any time they do spawn, and makes it nearer to you instead rather than the furthest.

I think I forgot to do that a couple of times in my one win.

Cheater!

Runners would be bad unless you don’t have many Terror cards with boots on them.

Super Horde, though, ended my game prematurely.

I had two hordes merge together and both had absorbed a few zombies beforehand, making for a total of 12 health.

(Typically, hordes do not merge together, though they can move together).

How are the Terror cards?

Not quite as boring as Terror From Above, but they’re getting close.

Quite a few simply spawn new zombies, basically giving a second spawn action after the Minion action.

There are also cards that will increase Horror (which is never good) and panic all victims.

There’s also one Minor Dark Power, which thankfully never came out for me.

Moving towards an enemy rather than panicking is a hit or miss thing, as often they’re panicking towards them anyway. Though some rooms they don’t panic out of, so this would force the issue.

The really cool thing about Terror From the Grave, though, are the vehicle action cards.

Every location from Series 1 & 2 has a vehicle of some sort with the zombies, and this vignette has an action card for that vehicle that overrides however it is supposed to work at that location (if the location has one).

At the beginning of the game, the face-down vehicle tokens are placed in all exit spaces (with any extras going to spaces furthest from you).

When you go to an exit space, turn the token over. If it has a steering wheel on it (1 in 4 chance), you get that action card in your hand and it becomes a normal action card for the rest of the game (going to the market after use, rebuying it, etc).

Each action card does its own thing. Some of them you have to carry with you everywhere and some have their own operator and you don’t have to be in its space.

Some of them do some really cool damage things.

Others just wipe zombies (and victims, sadly) out like nobody’s business. The helicopter can even wipe out hordes!

You can make good use of them if you’re lucky.

I loved the vehicles, and was able to use two of them really nicely.

Finally, let’s get to the one Final Girl that comes with this vignette.

Patsy has six health and five save slots, so not a bad combination.

Her ultimate is decent, though not devastating to the bad guys.

It works for zombies, though!

Spending 2 time to automatically do one damage to a killer or minion isn’t bad, and will help keep the zombie hordes from forming around you.

But overall it’s kind of bleh.

Saving additional victims moving you one space is pretty good, though.

Overall, I much preferred Terror From the Grave to Terror From Above.

It’s doing some interesting things, it has the zombies wandering around until they actually can focus on something, and it showcases how slow they can be by not having them move with feet.

The hordes can be difficult to handle, but not too bad.

And yes, we finally have a use for those “extra” boards that are supposed to be used when you have too many victims/pieces in a space, but does anybody really use them for that?

On the other hand, how fun they are is almost completely dependent on the location you use, and potentially the vehicle that is there.

While I do really enjoy how the zombies actually do something compared to the birds, some locations are just terrible for them while some are great.

Having the helicopter in Creech Manor was awesome because of all the exit spaces being outside. The zombies spawn in exit spaces and you can also lead them there, and then just let the helicopter do a lot of the work.

Other locations might not be as welcoming and it just gets easy to be overrun.

Not to mention the fact that unless you’ve purchased them separately somehow (I think they may be in the Ultimate boxes, so I might be fine), vehicle action cards for Series 3 & 4 aren’t available.

Those locations won’t have that awesomeness.

The zombies are a killer that I could see myself coming back to in various locations, just to see how balanced or unbalanced they are in each one.

(This review was written after 3 plays in various locations)