Zombicide creators’ HATE brings killing, torturing and cannibalism to Kickstarter

“If you want to rule, you have to fucking kill everyone.”

That’s the pithy and potty-mouthed summary of HATE, the latest board game by the designers of Zombicide already lined up to be CMON’s next Kickstarter success story.

Based on Adrian Smith’s graphic novel Chronicles of HATE, the game pits tribes against each other across a campaign that involves some legacy-style elements, scrapping to crown a leader of the wasteland.

While HATE’s core box plays up to four people, with support for six planned for future expansions, each fight is a one-on-one affair, with two sides of 11 characters moving around the terrain grid as they contest one of ten different scenarios, each with different objectives.

Each battle is said to take around 40 minutes, but the outcome can have lasting effects on the rest of the playthrough. Successful warriors can acquire new skills – implemented with transparent cards that slot over their sleeved character cards – while the less fortunate can end up losing abilities by suffering damage to their limbs or eyes.

One of the game’s most extreme concepts is the opportunity to drag an enemy combatant back to your village, which results in the foe being tortured to death or eaten for either resources or hate – the game’s upgrade currency – and being permanently eliminated from the rest of the campaign.

There are other permanent elements, too. Over the course of a chronicle, each player can develop and expand their tribe’s village by constructing new buildings, enabling new moves for their fighters and other abilities. A central chronicle sheet tracks each player’s overall progression and standing over the length of the playthrough.

As you might expect from a CMON project, HATE doesn’t skimp on the miniatures in the box, packing in 51 plastic figures. The majority are 32mm, with a few towering 75mm models for the giant-like characters from the world.

CMON previously confirmed that HATE would be exclusive to Kickstarter, saying at the time that the controversial decision had been made to avoid compromising its mature tone and “stripping out the atmosphere”.

It doesn’t appear to have turned players off of the crowdfunding campaign, though – HATE has already raised over half a million dollars on its $200,000 goal, with three weeks left on the clock.