From Van Ryder Games, Final Girl is a solo board game that plays out your typical slasher horror movie. Pursued by a relentless killer, you try to save others, scramble to find weapons, and prepare for the eventual showdown against your murderous hunter. From my understanding the original game design was released as Hostage Negotiator, where you played a law enforcement agent trying to match wits against an unhinged criminal. The design was tweaked and updated to fit within the slasher flick theme and functions as a deck builder game with task resolution using dice. The overall objective is to win by killing the murderer before they kill you.

Each game revolves around a specific scenario with a small board of several linked locations and numerous tokens representing victims, the murderer, and you as the final girl. The different pieces are all assigned to specific spots based on the scenario setup. You have a semi-circular sectioned player board that marks time for each round, and includes a separate track to indicate the horror level. A set of initial cards for various actions form your starting deck, with other, more powerful cards in a pool you can draft from. Card actions range from allowing to move between board locations, search areas for items to help, a weak attack against the killer, or a means to heal or manage time for your turn.

As a general turn overview, you start in the action phase playing cards to attempt doing something, and continue playing cards until you run out the time track (or decide to stop). You then may purchase cards using any remaining time from the action phase up to a maximum hand size of 10. Then the scenario will potentially have some random event followed up by the killer moving and attacking victims or trying to kill the final girl.

To play a card requires time. The initial cards you start with will always cost zero time (and are essentially free actions). In order to succeed at an action you roll dice dependent on the current horror level ranging from a terrifying situation using only 1 die, to a more prepared and focused situation allowing you to roll 3 dice. A die result can either be a success, a failure, or a success if the player discards 2 cards. So generally you’ve got a 1 in 3 chance of rolling successfully with better odds if discarding cards, and obviously, the more dice you roll, the better your chances. Each action card ranges from obtaining 2 or more successes resulting in doing the action with no penalties, a partial success (one) allowing you to do the action but hindered in some way, or failing outright which will use up time, increase the horror level, take damage, or possibly allow the killer to move and/or attack.

You as the final girl are trying to move from one section of the board to another, biding your time. When moving you can take up to two victim tokens along with you. Get to specific exit areas, you can save them, getting them to escape the crazed killer. Each victim you save gives you a small boost like increasing time, raising the horror level, getting a free action card, etc. Conversely as the killer slays victims their bloodlust increases and they will get more powerful, moving farther with each action, and doing more damage with each attack. So a key strategy is to try and rescue as many people as you can before trying to slay the killer. 

Additionally you can hold and carry a certain number of equipment cards. These can replenish health, act as weapons to bolster your attacks, or other effects which can help you manage time/horror during your turn. You’ll need those cards as combat can be brutal. In order to attack you must play specific action cards that will do a variable amount of damage. On the flip side the killer will do a varying number of attacks and damage depending on their state of bloodlust. Each attack will kill a victim, while attacks against the final girl remove counters from your health pool. Lose all your health from your pool, typically you’ll die outright and lose. The final girl is trying to do the same against the killer, but unfortunately their health pools are typically twice the amount of yours.

That’s generally the game. However, the nuances with managing time and the decisions on how to choose cards for the following turn, as well as what cards to play in your hand, is what makes the game. At the heart of it you are trying to manage time and act efficiently during your turn. Cards used during your turn cannot be available to replenish your deck until the following turn (effectively they go into a separate discard pile). So if you plow through all of your cheap zero action cards, as you acquire cards for the following turn those can’t be purchased. 

There are actions that will provide stunningly powerful attacks, or really alter the horror/time level to give you a breather but the cost in time to purchase and play them is high. Additionally you can mitigate the randomness of the dice by discarding cards from your hand. Those cards thrown away can allow you to do a critical action, but they won’t be available next turn, creating delicious conundrums on effective choices for what cards to play or discard. All while you are trying to balance out how much time to use doing actions or instead spend buying cards for your next turn.

Further, you can plan out your next turn only so much. Each turn there is a random game event that might allow the killer to do an extra move or alter the time and/or horror tracks. Additionally your victim tokens aren’t in static positions. If they end up in the same space as a killer and a victim is slain, they will scatter randomly to different locations. It can be like herding cats at times for the final girl to get them to safety. 

Layered onto this is a surprising amount of scenario variability adding to replay. While the board locations are static, setup can be one of many random options. There are more item cards than locations available. Only a limited number of cards for terror effects from a larger set are used each game, resulting in different events and a varied overall tempo with each play. Lastly the game has several modular elements which can be mixed freely. Most scenarios have particular rules and specific events associated with them. Each killer will have some random powers and event cards that are also thrown into the scenario deck. Further, each final girl has a special ability once they save a particular number of victims. This part of the game design is immensely enjoyable as you can end up with some wild combinations of locations, killers, and final girls to play. 

The Good – Final Girl is a challenging solo game. It has some randomness that can lead to unpredictable results but can be mitigated some. Managing time to allocate enough resources to obtain effective cards, while balancing what cards to use in order to be effective turn after turn is also an enjoyable challenge. It does offer an engaging experience. Additionally the product design is wonderful. Some of the game bits like the tokens are rather bare bones, but the overall design of the player boards, icons, and art adds to the game immensely.

The Bad – The game can run into a wall of randomness that can result in wildly different play experiences. Sometimes you get a chain of random events and die rolls that spiral into a quick game loss. And rarely, there will be a few games with a series of fortunate events that allow you to comfortably cruise to victory. The later part of the game can have the tension drift somewhat towards more mechanical play as you just try to whittle down a killer’s health, playing the numbers game to ward off enough attacks to survive their assault. The buy in is rather odd as you need a core set, and then an additional setting expansion to actually play the game, and it seems that not all expansions fit everyone’s tastes with some feeling a little more fleshed out that others.

The Verdict – Final Girl is a wonderful solo game. The balance of managing time, and deciding what cards to play or retain in order to plan out future turns, while being effective for the current turn is a fun challenge. It also does capture that feeling of dread and tension. Each hapless victim results in the killer becoming more and more an unstoppable force. And the pressure of keeping the horror level low enough to be relatively successful at actions adds to this feeling of dread, as there is this steady push to ramp up the horror level. Throw in those occasional highs of a wildly successful action, stumbling across some needed weapon to take the fight to the killer, it all just makes for a great experience that hits the right notes of those slasher films.

Attached to the game play is stellar design and art. The game boxes are cleverly designed to serve as scenario maps and killer boards with the overall product looking like a video cassette box. And this is what takes it over the top for me, every expansion dips heavily into horror movie tropes. Some take place in a remote summer camp with an unstoppable killer. Another is your typical suburban neighborhood, with an elusive hunter that can only be killed in the final girl’s dreams. While a different expansion is at a remote Antarctic outpost, with the final girl having to first determine which victim is secretly a doppelganger monster hiding among them.  

Even better is that every scenario, killer, and final girl can be cobbled together with other expansions to make your own customized game. Got a scenario down enough able to figure out the tempo of horror events making overall play predictable? Throw in a different killer and it scrambles that experience for you. It’s an immensely clever design resulting in a lot of replayability. 

I would say one slight is Final Girl does lean towards making a few purchases to get the most out of it. You’ll probably get a fair amount of play out of the core set and a single expansion, but having 2 or 3 more on hand will likely allow for more interesting options. Another ding is that not all expansions are created equal. Just about all of them draw from a particular horror movie theme, with some being more successful than others. Camp Happy trails is serviceable, but there are no special rules making it as generic of a slasher film setting as there is. While events, gear, and setups are certainly something you’ve seen in those type of horror movies before, you might find it more enjoyable to delve into other expansions with unique rules. 

Regardless, as a solo game Final Girl is great. And certainly a must buy if horror movies are in your wheelhouse.