Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game is a gripping semi-cooperative zombie survival board game where players must work together to keep a struggling colony alive while secretly pursuing their own objectives.

The world has been devastated by a zombie apocalypse. Food is running low, zombies are everywhere, and every decision can have serious consequences.

🎯 How to Play

1. 🏚️ Build Your Colony

Players begin with a small group of survivors gathered at the colony.

The colony is the central safe haven, surrounded by dangerous locations such as the Grocery Store, Police Station, School, Gas Station, Library, and Hospital.

Each player controls their own survivors and rolls action dice at the beginning of their turn.

2. 🎯 Receive Your Objectives

Everyone shares a Main Objective that the colony must try to complete.

But each player also receives a Secret Objective.

Your personal objective may require you to:

• Help the colony
• Collect specific resources
• Keep certain survivors alive
• Achieve a particular condition
• Or, in some games, secretly work against everyone else

This creates the central tension of Dead of Winter:

Do what's best for the colony — or what's best for you?

3. 🎲 Roll Your Action Dice

At the beginning of the player-turn phase, roll your available action dice.

Different survivors have different abilities and values, so your dice can be used for different actions.

Some actions require a specific die result or higher, while others don't require an action die.

4. 🚶 Move Your Survivors

Send survivors out from the colony to search dangerous locations for useful supplies.

You can visit places such as:

• 🛒 Grocery Store — Food
• 🚓 Police Station — Weapons
• 🏫 School — Useful supplies and survivors
• ⛽ Gas Station — Fuel
• 📚 Library — Useful items
• 🏥 Hospital — Medicine

But movement isn't completely safe.

Whenever a survivor moves to a new location, they normally must roll the Exposure Die.

A blank may mean nothing happens — but a wound, frostbite, or bite can turn a routine trip into a disaster.

5. 🔎 Search for Supplies

Use your survivors to search locations for valuable items.

Searching can reveal:

• 🍎 Food
• 🔫 Weapons
• 💊 Medicine
• ⛽ Fuel
• 🧰 Tools
• 🧪 Other useful items

You can also choose to make additional noise while searching to look through more cards — but making noise can attract zombies later.

6. 🧟 Fight the Zombies

Zombies constantly threaten your survivors.

Use action dice to attack zombies at your survivor's location.

Killing a zombie removes it from the board, but normally requires an Exposure roll afterward.

And remember:

☠️ A single bite can become a disaster.

If an Exposure roll results in a Bite, the survivor dies and the bite can spread to another survivor at the same location.

Whenever a survivor dies, the colony's Morale decreases by 1.

7. 🚧 Protect the Colony

The colony needs more than weapons.

Players can:

• Build barricades
• Gather food
• Remove waste
• Add survivors
• Search for supplies
• Fight zombies
• Contribute cards to crises

Keeping the colony organized is essential because its resources are constantly being consumed.

8. 🚨 Resolve Crises

At the end of the player turns, the colony must deal with the current Crisis.

Players secretly contribute appropriate cards to help prevent the crisis.

But there's a catch:

🕵️ Someone may secretly contribute the WRONG cards.

The crisis is then resolved based on the cards contributed.

Failing a crisis can cause serious problems for the colony, while successfully preventing one can help maintain morale.

9. 🍎 Feed the Colony

During the Colony Phase, the group must pay food based on the number of survivors at the colony.

If there isn't enough food:

❄️ Starvation begins.

Starvation causes the colony's Morale to drop, making an already difficult situation even worse.

10. 🗑️ Manage the Waste

Every card thrown away contributes to the colony's waste pile.

If too much waste accumulates, Morale decreases.

This means even seemingly harmless actions can eventually create problems for the entire group.

11. 🧟 The Zombies Keep Coming

After resolving the crisis, new zombies are added to the board.

The number of zombies depends on the number of survivors at each location, while noise tokens can attract additional zombies.

If too many zombies enter a location, an overrun can occur, putting survivors in serious danger.

12. 🃏 Experience Crossroads Events

One of Dead of Winter's signature mechanics is the Crossroads deck.

At the beginning of a player's turn, another player draws a Crossroads card and keeps it secret.

If the correct trigger occurs during the active player's turn, the card is revealed and the player faces a story event with a difficult choice.

Your decision can:

• Help the colony
• Harm another survivor
• Introduce new survivors
• Provide useful items
• Create new problems
• Change the story

These cards make every game feel different and create memorable moments.