"Real Time" Zombie Movement

[mkrob89]

Has anyone toyed with moving the zombies, during the movement phase as the Heroes, when playing solo?

My intention for this is the fact Zombies will react immediately to a Heroes actions. So I tried a method of moving the Zombies as I moved my Heroes.

This made moving much more strategic, as a hole in the zombies alignment could close mid-movement, leaving the Hero surrounded by Zombies!

Board Layout -
Attempt 1: Normal board configuration. Normal spawning rules.
Attempt 2: 4 L boards, in a rectangle.

Results: Attempt 2 worked best. It was a smaller board and allowed the Zombies to spawn in the middle of the board, instead of the edges.

How it worked:

I rolled a D4 along with the D6 movement dice. The D4 acted as a Noise dice, I suppose. It determined the strength of the action the Hero took. I rolled it and applied it even when searching.
1 = 1 space
2 = 2 spaces
3 = 3 spaces
4 = No noise

Attempt 1: For every 1 space the Hero moved, the zombies moved 1 space, that were within the D4 range.
Example: move hero 1 space, then any zombie within the d4 rolled, moves 1 space. Rinse and repeat until hero cannot move or a zombie enters their space.

Attempt 2: for every 2 spaces the Hero moves, the zombies move 1 space.

Results: Attempt 2 seemed to work better. Attempt 1 was way too hard. I got to thinking, zombies are a little slower to react, so a 2:1 hero:zombie movement may seem more logical. It worked well! Still challenging but not too overwhelming!

Spawning:
Attempt 1 and 2 - I spawned zombies based on the heroes locations first.

This counted as the Zombie movement, for the Zombie turn phase. Only a movement card, played during the Zombie Turn, could move them any additional spaces.

I will continue to playtest this and see what results I come up with! Attempt 2 was a much better playthrough, as I lost on the final round trying to get to the truck!

Has anyone else tried anything like this before?