If any game can be said to be true to its title and theme, ‘Final Girl’ is it. In its most simple form, it is a single player, one-on-one game. You play the titular final girl, squaring up against one of many slashers / monsters / other horror movie icons. You are completely outmatched, outgunned and forced into a desperate race to somehow gather the necessary skills and tools to beat the odds before they become so overwhelmingly powerful that your death is inevitable.
Final Girl is a modular game comprised of a core box, then a series of ‘films’, each of which contain a killer, a location and two final girls (along with their unique items). Each of these elements can be mixed and matched to your heart’s content, offering an ever increasing variety the more ‘films’ you add to your collection.
The game itself, regardless of the combination you choose, follows the same basic pattern. Save as many potential victims as you can to power up your character, eventually unlocking their special ability, whilst accumulating skill cards via the currency of time (which also has to be spent to use the skill cards you already possess), managing your fear level (the more scared you get, the less dice you can roll and the more likely your skills are to fail), gathering equipment to further boost your abilities and damage and finally, trying to prevent the killer from killing victims, which will in turn power him up. Basically, you’re in a race against the killer, a race where the odds are heavily stacked in his favour.
This makes for a tense, deeply cinematic game, but also one that is very swingy and luck based. However, if you can accept how much of a part luck plays in this game and embrace the theme wholeheartedly, it is by far the best dedicated single player game currently available.
The core box contains the bare basics needed for the game, meeples, cards, rules, that kind of thing. It is quite utilitarian and straight forward, so not much more can really be said about it.
An individual film box has 2 detachable covers that ‘almost’ lay flat, one dedicated to the killer, the second to the location. It also contains cards for 2 final girls (player characters), then tokens and assorted cards that give the player and killer skills and the like, set up instructions and items.
Set up and tear down of this game is very simplistic and effortless, as both can be accomplished in a matter of minutes and it is not to space hungry, both on the tabletop and in shelf space when being stored.
As far as table presence is concerned, it is a little lacklustre, having no eye catching minis, no huge play mats, just a number of cards and two small boards. It is a further testament to the core of the game then, considering just how thematic and cinematic it gets whilst being so lacking in the ‘eye candy’ department.
And that is the basic game, 2 small boxes and a desperate race for survival, but then we get onto the topic of ‘Season Boxes’.
To date, there are 3 seasons of Final Girl available, with a 4th coming to Kickstarter very soon (at the time of writing). Each of these boxes are sizeable and full to the brim with content.
To give an example, the first season box contains the core box, 5 movie boxes, a vignette (effectively an extra killer), neoprene play mats, minis and other assorted thematic things including a campaign booklet. This is a huge amount of content and is repeated for each subsequent season.
In short, there is a huge amount of game currently available for Final Girl, to the point where it is quite overwhelming for someone getting started.
Back to the game itself, the artwork, is plain and to the point, emphasising function over form and is perfectly serviceable. It neither adds or detracts from the theme of the game, a decision which seems to have been deliberate and one I personally feel was the correct one as it allows the game’s strongest point, the theme, to take a deserving centre stage.
The complexity of the game can be really quite variable, but in simple terms, as the seasons progress, the game has more and more rules added, increasing its complexity. Due to its modular nature though, you are able to dial in the complexity to match what you are in the mood for at any given moment.
Replayability is the game’s second greatest strength, only just sitting behind its theme. The modular nature once again plays a heavy part, providing an enormous variety of locations, killers and player characters. You will not exhaust all this game has to offer for a very, very long time.
Player interaction is another area where this game scores heavily, with a fast paced, furious play style that keeps you on your toes, although it is very reactive in nature. You tend to respond to events rather than enact any kind of grand plan, which some people might find to not be to their tastes.
Component quality is perfectly acceptable, with only the box cover play boards, being a minor grumble (they never lay flat on the table top). However, when you look at the various optional extras available, I would strongly advise against getting the minis, as they are so small they serve absolutely no useful purpose in the game and, if you are the type who enjoys painting minis, I would still really advise even you give these a miss. Personally, I find them to be so bad that I never use any of them when I play the game.
The final thing I want to cover is what I hope will be helpful for anyone who feels they would like to give ‘Final Girl’ a go. My advice would be to not buy any of the season boxes to begin with, but instead pick up a core box and one single film box from season 1.
The question, of course, is which one? Well, the best way I have found of thinking about it is to ask yourself one question. Freddy or Jason? Do you prefer Friday the 13th movies or Nightmare on Elm Street? If you have sided with Jason, buy the ‘Happy Trails Horror’ film box. If Freddy is more your thing, then get the ‘Frightmare on Maple Lane’ film box.
After that, if you find that Final Girl is your thing, you can either go all in with a season box, or look at further film boxes and pick whichever one appeals to you. Either way, if you can embrace the theme of this game and forgive some of the moments of blind luck that will occur, you will find yourself playing quite possibly the best purely single player game out there (especially if you start playing in a darkened room with some 1980’s slasher movie music on).
Overall score - 95
- Artwork - 3
- Complexity - 3
- Replayability - 5
- Player Interaction - 4
- Component Quality - 3 (1 for the minis)
Likes:
- Intensely thematic experience
- Modular nature of the game
- Fast and furious play style
- Almost endless replayability
- The way the game builds to a final confrontation between you and the killer
Dislikes:
- Awful minis
- Killer and location boards do not lay flat
