Star Fighters: Rapid Fire First Impressions

Star Fighters: Rapid Fire is a real-time dice game where players control spaceships.

Those spaceships are used to destroy other spaceships.

Each player hops into the cockpit of their own starfighter and duels it out in a dog fight to prove who is the superior pilot.

Star Fighters: Rapid Fire Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

Players roll their dice as fast as they can in real-time and assign them to their board, when complete they shout Fire! The remaining players can place any rolled dice on the board but have to stop rolling.

Players take turns activating their dice to turn, move, fire, launch tracking missiles and repair shields.

How do you win?

Destroy the opponent’s ship to win in 2 player game. I would guess in a 3-4 player game it’s last ship standing.

Main Mechanisms

Real-time dice rolling and action selection. There’s also a little bit of action programming.

USP

I mean, there is nothing too unique here but the real-time dice rolling for programming combat actions is the selling point.

This was the 4th PvP fighting game I played at UK Games Expo 23.

Theme

Big ships in a small area of space. I don’t see much theme in there at all.

Setup

Boards out, dice out, ships out, done.

Components & Artwork

I mean, the ships look OK and the dice are nice. I think the plastic ships are in a ‘premium’ edition or something. Otherwise, it’s cardboard tokens that are not so good.

Ease of Teaching

It’s pretty easy to teach as the actions on the board make sense.

Similar Games

I immediately thought of Space Cadets: Dice Duel which I played at Essen 2013. That’s basically the same game but multiple players control different aspects of the ships.

Star Fighters: Rapid Fire Review

Positives

I like real-time dice rolling, Steam Park does it best for me.

Negatives

It’s a bit flat.

With no baddie, scenario or wider gameplay, there isn’t much to bring you back to it.

Summary

Meh, move on!

Jesta ThaRogue