Many games have solo modes included now, especially those released since 2020 (yeah, you know why) but Final Girl is a solo game only, designed for one player to make all the mistakes choices.
What is Final Girl? According to BoardGameGeek, it is a re-implementation of Hostage Negotiator and looking at the photos on there, it is easy to see the bits and pieces carried over from that game. But what made me want to play Final Girl, and what keeps me coming back, is the theme.
I’m not a horror aficionado by any means, but I know the big names and the tropes for the genre enough to know who the Final Girl is - the last surviving character of a horror film who goes from the zero to hero, defeating the monster while fighting for their own life. I was immediately drawn to the whole idea of the game and picked up the Core Box and my first Feature Film set - Frightmare on Maple Lane - at PAX Unplugged 2021.
The Core Box includes all the base components that go across every game - the Final Girl, Killer and Victim meeples, health hearts, action cards, 6 chunky red dice and some other cardboard tokens. Every game of Final Girl uses these pieces, but it is not a game on its own. You need a Feature Film box to combine with it all to have a complete game and there are several to choose from, each featuring a different location, (non-copyright infringing) Killer, and two Final Girls.
Each Feature Film box can be mixed and match with other ones - you can have the campers from Happy Trails facing off against the Poltergeist or relocate the pig-masked sledgehammer butcher Hans to a spaceship. Each Killer, Location, and Final Girl have their own quirks and tweaks to the game, creating variations and chances to recreate those “Who would win?” scenarios of your favorite killer vs final girl.
The basic game is about hand management and dice rolling - you try to use your cards and time wisely as you move around the board, rescuing potential victims to gain bonus actions and preparing your girl for her final showdown with the killer. Each victim you safely rescue earns you an instant bonus and if you fill up your Final Girl’s card, it flips over and unlocks a permanent bonus for the rest of the game.
But you have to balance the risk/reward of ferrying those hapless victims around the map and searching locations for helpful items because after your turn, the Killer gets a turn, pulling a card from the Terror deck, triggering events and searching for their next victim. Once the deck of 10 cards runs out, it triggers the finale, unlocking a dark power for the killer and making them more powerful.
Oh, and those dice. This big, chonky, red dice that hate you. 1-2 are fails, 3-4 are not quite and 5-6 are successes. You can discard cards to manipulate the dice, but otherwise you can play out an entire scene only to have them betray you, watching the time tick down as you reroll or change tactics. If you don’t like games with dice and luck as an element, you probably won’t like Final Girl because a few bad rolls can doom you.
The playmats do not come with the game but after buying it, they feel essential. There are so many components and when I set up my first few games on the table, it was easy to miss the flow of things. The playmats help you organize the chaos of dice and cards and mini-game boards that are otherwise floating on the table. There’s also a great playlist on Spotify with bits and pieces from horror movie soundtracks that makes for great background music as you play.
So, that’s the basics for Final Girl. I will do separate entries on the Feature Film boxes I own (Camp Happy Trails, Frightmare on Maple Lane, Panic at 2891) because they all have unique setup options and this might be the longest entry I’ve typed for this newsletter yet! Thanks for reading this far!
Don't know if I'll get it, but I did put this on my Yule list!