I've been playing this Resident Evil board game for years, but I didn't know how much it had taught me until I played Requiem

I'm gingerly stepping outside of a safe room having just scribbled my progress into a typewriter, not knowing what lies on the other side of that old crusty door. I've got two handgun bullets in the chamber, an orange health bar, and a talisman-shaped hole in my inventory. I know where the zombies are, and I know I need to get past them to reach the final piece of the puzzle - just how I'm going to survive the journey, though, is pretty much down to chance at this point.

The Resident Evil games I was raised on would have me sprinting through these corridors, shotgun cocked without even a green herb for reassurance. I'm a child of Leon S Kennedy, taught to fear only chainsaw wielding sack-heads and lake monsters. I've never really had to sneak efficiently, I came up through gunpowder and parries, far from the '90s echoes of Spencer Mansion.

I could be playing Resident Evil Requiem right now, or I could be playing the SteamForged Resident Evil: The Board Game that's been sitting in pride of place on my shelf since release in 2023. Both force my hand into playing a more considered, strategic Resident Evil experience than I grew up with but the latter has made my time with Grace Ashcroft make far more sense.

At first I was confused when I started playing the tabletop adventure all those years ago. Closing doors can save my life? I don't need to shoot everything that moves?

Steamforged's take on the survival horror classic showed me how the game was supposed to run. You can love or hate modern Resident Evil's more action-oriented sensibilities, but there's no denying that the original respected cunning, scrappy manoeuvres in a way that hadn't quite been matched until the latest instalment.

It's got all the makings of a classic Resident Evil video game, boiled down to a series of considered steps, slower actions, and finite options per turn. Each run takes you through a map that only expands as you discover it - any door could lead to any number of possibilities on the other side. Whether you open it could be the difference between success and a bloody death, working out when to (quite literally) roll the dice takes time, strategy, and inventory awareness.

Translated into a modular map, character cards, and item tokens, Resident Evil: The Board Game has reigned in my trigger-happy ways through its emphasis on considered actions and reactions. I didn't even realise I'd been trained in the art of survival horror until Requiem booted up on my PS5. It was only when I found myself counting bullets, sprinting past fodder zombies, and making elaborate escape plans around the whims of a mutated chef that I realized how much I'd learned from these little cardboard squares.

The old me would have given up, bored of getting caught or having to manage an impossibly small inventory. The years of working it all out on the kitchen table have paid off, though. I can enjoy failing, I've got the patience to dig into the strategy, the horror of my own powerlessness is all the more delicious.

So, if - like me - you've largely stuck to the explosive Resident Evil action sequences of 4, 5, 6, and Village, give the physical version a go. Resident Evil: The Board Game is more than a tabletop spin-off, it plays like a masterclass in the technicalities of traditional survival horror. I don't think I would have stuck with Requiem if it hadn't been on my shelf for the last three years.

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