Solotober - Final Girl

It's up to you, don't let yourself down!

Hello friends. In the last newsletter, Final Girl won the popular vote! You can vote for the next game I play by voting in the poll at the bottom of the article. This will be the last poll for Solotober!

Today’s solo adventure?

Final Girl (Core box) by Evan Derrick & A J Porfirio. Published by Van Ryder Games. The Feature Film I’m playing is A Knock at the Door which was designed by Mike Martins.

This is a fascinating project and I’m so glad I picked it up. To play this solo-only game, you need 2 products: The Core box & A Feature Film.

The Core box has the rules, all the victim and health tokens you’ll need, and the action cards you’ll need to play the game. But, this requires a Feature Film box to play.

The Feature Film box is the setting, villain(s), and character(s) you’ll play with. These can mix and match with other Feature Film boxes. But requires the Core box to play.

In Final Girl: A Knock at the Door, you try to save as many victims in the house that you can, before this gang of creepy religious psychos kill everyone. Setup is variable in each playthrough. You’ll craft weapons, sneak around the map saving folks, and slapping the villains around every few turns until either you’re the last one standing or the villains slay you.

SETUP:

Setup is straight forward. Take both lids off your Feature Film box of choice. (yeah, BOTH) Follow setup instructions in the core box and reference the villain and location instructions for the Feature Film you chose when necessary. For me, the only changes from the core box were that I needed to add 2 extra villain tokens, an Active Killer token (we’re hopping between 3 villains, this just tells you which one is doing what), and how to setup the unique items for this location.

The setup card from the Feature Film box has you place out all the little victim tokens on the map, as well as where you and the villains start. The Core box has you set out a tableau of action cards you’ll constantly interact with as you play and how to setup the character boards (with health, horror level and time tokens).

As variable as each game of Final Girl can be, I found setup to be a breeze. Some things are always the same as they’re established in the Core box, and each location and villain from a Feature box (these can be mix and matched!) brings a small flair of change. After watching a few reviews, it seems this particular film was one of the most ‘fiddly’ ones to play as you have 3 villains instead of the usual 1. (I didn’t find that to be an issue at all, but just something to keep in mind if you want to start with a film with less moving pieces)

There are around 16 or so Feature Films to choose from now with a number of flavors and expansions on top of that. A Knock at the Door has one of the highest ratings on Board Game Geek and it was in the top 3 of many reviewers I watched, which is why I chose it to start with.

This is the first time I’ve played a Final Girl game.

GAMEPLAY:

The game is played over a series of phases. There are no set amount of rounds, the game ends when you or the villains are dead. Using a kind of hand/deck-building mechanic, you have access to cards with simple actions on them. (Walking, striking the enemy, focusing, etc.) You can play a number of these action cards during this first phase, but they all require a ‘Horror Roll’. The game comes with 6 dice, but you’ll only have access to about 2 the entire game.

Each action card has 3 results. If you can claim 2 successes from your dice results, you’ll get the best option on the card. There’s an option for 1 success and for 0 successes. You have a few opportunities to manipulate those dice results, but they come at a severe cost of having less actions to play with. (And you’re usually giving up the ‘time’ resource, which functions as your money when buying the available actions in the tableau that you can use on the next turn)

Once you’ve played all the actions you want/can by moving around on the map, trying to hit the villains or save victims, the next phase is to buy actions from the tableau. The cards you just played don’t become available again until the next turn, so there’s some planning involved if you want to really succeed. And depending on how much ‘time’ you have left, you can purchase an expensive card like being able to retaliate when a villain hits you. (You can easily die after being hit by the villains in just a few turns, be careful!)

Once your done buying cards, the villains get a turn.

If they’re in a room with you or a victim they hit them. Victims only have 1 health, and when victims die, the villains get stronger, and sometimes you’ll lose access to a dice when you make a horror roll. Then you’ll flip over a terror card which gives the villains even more actions. Usually it has them moving around on the board to hunt you or more victims down and killing them. It’s not unusual for 3+ victims to die on the same turn. (Each time a victim dies, the villains can move further and harm you more. Beware!)

Following their killing spree is a ‘panic’ phase. If anyone died, victims in the same room as the villains freak out and run in random directions. (This is determined by a dice roll and moving them depending on what the map offers) Yes, sometimes this does mean victims will foolishly run into a room with a villain.

Once everyone has calmed down, you get a chance to take a breath and get ready for the next round by rearranging the items and weapons you’ve picked up in this nightmare situation.

My Thoughts:

It took me about 60 minutes to play this game. It was my first time and I managed to save 2 people and kill 1 of the villains! The other 20 victims however, died before I could save them. I was ultimately killed by the last 2 villains (Baghead and Zeke). There are no points to count, you just lose if you die.

This was an extremely fun time and I’m so glad I picked this up. The villains were easy to manage, they don’t have resources to keep track of or anything like that. Just flip over a terror card, move a villain, move the active killer token up or down and move the next villain. Simple simple simple. Which is great because the big puzzle comes from deciding when and what action cards to play. The constant juggle between choosing the right moves and making sure I had enough resources to buy the action cards I needed for the next turn was a satisfying puzzle.

I lost spectacularly. Once 1 victim is claimed, the dominoes start falling and if you don’t manage to get ahead of things, the game turns it up to 11 fast. It should work the same in reverse! The more people I manage to save, the stronger I get giving me an edge to actually win.

It felt like a horror movie. I felt the tension and was constantly yelling at the knucklehead victims running into the wrong rooms and being completely foolish. In my game a victim turned into my boyfriend who betrayed everyone, and although I never was able to kill him, if I had, I would have been rewarded righteously!

Also the box is beautiful and genius. Both sides of the magnetic lids come off to create the boards you’re playing on. They look like VHS tapes on the shelf. (Actually one of the reasons that motivated me buying this game is I want a similar box for my games) And I really love how they’ve separated the game into pieces. Most board games come in one big box for a big price.

Not Final Girl.

$20 for the core box and about $20 for whatever Feature Film you want. And if you want more, It’s just another $20 for a different film that looks great on the shelf. And the genius on top of that is they can mix and match, so if you buy 2 films, say A knock at the door and Into the Void (Aliens!!), you can have aliens hunt you down in the cottage and/or these 3 murdering psychos attacking you in space. The horrific fun never stops.

The only thing I don’t like about this game, is that there’s not a co-op/2 player mode. I know the name of the game is Final Girl and there’s only 1 of you. But like every horror movie I’ve ever watched, half the fun is convincing your partner to get over their fears and watch it with you. The same could have happened here!

I’m so glad I picked this game up. I’m looking forward to the next Feature Film I get.

I paid $37 for both the Core box and the Feature Film a week ago (October 2023).