How to play Final Girl & Review

Final Girl is a solo, hand-management game.

Title: Final Girl

Year Published: 2021

Designer: Evan Derrick, A. J. Porfirio

Publisher: Van Ryder Games

Players: 1

Game Time: ~60 minutes

Set-up Time: ~5 minutes

Ages: 14+

Theme: You’re the last girl in a scary movie.

Mechanisms: Solo

How to win: Kill the Killer before the Killer kills you.

Game Description

Playing on a famous horror movie trope, this puts the player in the shoes of a female protagonist who must kill the slasher if she wants to survive.

How to play Final Girl

I show you how to play Final Girl with the generic rules that will hopefully give you enough info to play with most of the feature film boxes.

Main mechanisms

Dice Rolling is a mechanism apparently, but I never really count it.

Hand Management is one mechanism in this game and it’s really important. The choice to keep or ditch cards is a big one. You also have to choose between using time and spending it to get new cards.

Pick-up and Deliver! Yes, you have to escort those victims out of the way to power up yourself and prevent the Killer from getting stronger by killing them.

USP

This is based on Hostage Negotiator so the gameplay isn’t unique in a way. I think the plug-and-play Girls, Killers and Locations is fairly unique to a board game.

Theme

This plug-and-play system means you can make a theme that suits you. In the pictures, I have ‘Red’ vs ‘The Big Bad Wolf’ which I really enjoy.

Setup & Rulebook

The setup is OK if you play one game. If you play multiple back-to-back games you have to reset up a few things which I find really tedious.

The rulebook is OK. You have 2 extra rules sheets in each feature film box but between them, I don’t feel comfortable that I know 100% that I’m playing everything correctly. This is because the rules have to stay generic and don’t always account for each and every Killer/Final Girl ability.

Final Girl Components & Artwork

The boxes are strong and magnetic. They come off and work as the board but as they do come off the box they hinge upwards on the table where the box edge is.

The cards are OK, the meeples are decent and all the other components are above average including the storage solution.

I really like the art for the Killer and Final Girl and I also like the detail on the location boards.

Ease of Teaching

Not required, except to yourself. But as I said earlier, the rulebook doesn’t give me confidence I’m doing everything correctly.

Similar Games

I’ve already mentioned the game this is based on, Hostage Negotiator. My favourite solo game right now is Marvel United.

How many players is the Final Girl board game?

1 player! This is a solo-only board game. I guess you can play Final Girl with more than one person if you work together.

Is Final Girl Replayable?

Yes, it is, even if you only have one Feature Film Box, you have the option of 2 Final Girls to play and two levels of difficulty for the Killer. The Killer’s abilities will be different, the setup of the Killer, Final Girl and Victims location will be different, and the Events that trigger during a game will be different.

Final Girl Summary

This is a very fun and tactical solo game that I may never win ever! I’ll leave this setup for a while and try not to get sucked into buying everything from Seasons 1 and 2!

Round-Up

Worth a go even if you normally don’t play solo games.

Rating

I give it 7/10