Designer: Kevin Lanzing
Manufacturer: Indie Boards and Cards
Year: 2011
My most memorable
fire? Probably the place on Northfield road. It was a student party, someone
left the gas on, someone lit a rollup and the rest is history. Must have been 7
or 8 of them that didn't get out by themselves. I'd just carried a particularly
rotund gentleman to the ambulance when Henry radioed through, he'd heard a
scream coming from the lounge. I rushed in, smoke so thick you could taste it
through the respirator, and you'd only see 10 feet in front of you. I just
about reached the lounge door when it blew open in a massive fireball. Time
froze for a second, before a scream from inside the room snapped me back to
reality. I ran into the bedroom next door and brought my axe down through the
plasterboard, squeezed through and surveyed the room. To my left was the
shredded remains of a keg, to the right do you know who was screaming? A goddamn TV,
they'd been playing a drinking game to the horror channel. I was just about to
turn around and leave when I saw her huddled in the corner. She must have been
six weeks old, a black lab. The students weren't allowed to keep her, so...
ever since then we've been the best of friends. Isn't that right girl?"
*Woof*
Flash point is a 2-5 play co-operative fire fighting game.
You'll have to balance your time carefully in order to control the blaze,
investigate points of interest and rescue survivors all before the inferno
destroys the house for good.Each turn you have a set number of action points depending
on your role, these can be spent to move around, open/close doors, fight fires,
operate the fire engine's hose and a variety of other tasks. Not all actions
are equal in Flash point, walking around might only use 1 action point, but if
you want to do it while carrying a victim then that costs 2. However you can be
prepared for this, if you don't use all your action points on one turn you can
save them up to spend on future turns when you need them more.
Ultimately your true enemy in Flash Point is the fire, and
this is a losing battle. Every turn you roll the 2 dice which give you a grid
reference to spawn 1 smoke tile. If you roll a tile that has already got a
smoke card then that ignites and becomes a fire, roll a tile that already has a
fire and you get an explosion, which causes 4 fire tiles to be spawned (one in
each cardinal direction). If an explosion would hit a wall then you put down a
damage token instead, if all of the damage tokens are on the board then the
house falls down, killing everyone inside and losing you the game. Since one of
the more useful actions is to cut holes in walls with your axe, which causes
damage tokens, this lose condition can come faster than you think. In addition
there are hazardous containers which cause explosions as soon as they are
rolled, though you can take them out of the house. There are also Hot Spots
which make you roll a second time when you roll them, after placing your second
roll you place another hotspot down on that area, just to encourage you to win
quickly.
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| The game set up for the family version in the easy house, Those fires can spread quickly if you ignore them, but then again people won't rescue themselves, so you better be able to prioritise. |
The other loss condition involves the points of interest.
Some of these are blanks, but most are people that you need to save, lose more
than a couple and it's game over, save 7 and you win the game. It's important
to note that the most important one is the dog, saving the dog wins you a moral
victory, sloppy kisses and the admiration of your peers!
The game actually comes with a basic and advanced version,
and as a warning the advanced version is a big difficulty step up. It adds a
lot of rules that an experienced gamer might be comfortable with like the
different player roles and hazardous materials, while the base game is much
more simplified and more suitable for new/younger gamers. The game board is
also two sided, each side having a different house layout to rescue people
from, one is notable more difficult than the other (open plan designs are a
fire hazard apparently).
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| The 8 different classes, they have a good degree of variety, from the staple 'move other players' to the Paramedic who can heal people enough that they don't need to be carried, but at the cost of being awful at putting out fire. |
Flash point is an enjoyable game that I constantly find
myself craving. The game does feel a bit more random than over co-ops, but I
think that's just an artefact of using a dice for randomisation rather than a
deck of cards, often in other coops you know that card X has come up so you
don't actually need to worry about it appearing again until the deck gets
reshuffled. In flash point you have no such luxury and it's possible to roll
the same point 3 times in a row if lady luck particularly hates you. The game
is brutal even in the easiest difficulty setting of the advanced game,
especially so with more players where a safe room can transform into an inferno
between turns. There is also the risk of one player being stuck as the fire
engine driver, because frankly the hose is insanely good and the ability to use
it for half the action points and re-roll is too good to ignore. It's fine so
long as someone is happy with the idea of being a massive help to the team, but
never actually saving anyone. Despite its flaws Flash Point is a solid game,
and a wonderful tribute to fire-fighters who risk their own lives to protect
others.
7/10
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