At last year’s (month’s) club holiday party for Victory Gamers, I nearly won the base set and expansion for Final Girl from Van Ryder Games. It was a White Elephant exchange and someone stole it from me. He was then, saint that he is, kind enough to hand me the base set and basic “Feature Film” (a scenario with a map, killer, and set of girls–all modular across films) for the game. He just wanted the attached bonus expansion, so I managed to make my way home with a copy of a solo game I’ve wanted for years. I love my club’s holiday party.

Final Girl is named for the trope in which the aforementioned girl/woman turns around and defeats the killer, escaping to tell the story of what happened. That’s exactly what the game is. It’s a solo game where you play the final girl in the movie, turning around to save other survivors, find supplies, and ultimately kill the killer. I’ve played a few games now and can report back: it plays remarkably well, assuming you don’t pick up one of the lesser feature films. More on that later. Let’s start with the game that won me over: my very first game.

The First Movie

I’m going to tell this as a narrative–er, loosely. I’m no writer, but let’s give this a shot. I will be embellishing exactly two details in this narrative description that were not given to me by game mechanics.

As Laurie, the final girl, I found myself at summer camp (“Happy Trails”) as things went wrong. Hans the serial killer was striking people down–between the blood curdling screams and horrifying evidence, I knew I couldn’t just escape. I started off by rescuing a few people closest to the exits, with each one emboldening me more and more. Then, tragedy struck: Hans went from one side of the camp, where we’d last heard him kill someone, all the way to the other, landing right in the middle of six campers by the campfire. He killed several as the others ran off in every possible direction.

I began to search, first at the docks, then by the cabins. That’s when Hans showed up yet again. Out of nowhere, he came bursting through the woods and nearly cleaved through me. As I ran away, I left the cabins burning in my wake, causing the first bit of harm to him I’d done all game. Better late than never–at least he was mortal.

It was in the shed I found some luck: a bear trap and a note from my girlfriend, Jenny: the badass. We met up and setup our trap. I prepared everything I could: I was ready to work with Jenny to stop Hans dead in his tracks and hit him with a critical blow from my aluminum baseball bat. We had this.

Hans did show up. He did step in the trap. I did hit him–hard, and repeatedly. And he… survived. Jenny didn’t.

Distraught, I ran off into the camp, finding myself at the edge of the cliff, overlooking the lake. Hans came out of the woods, again, and steadily walked toward me. He attacked and I struck back, tripping him and knocking him off the cliff. I didn’t escape unscathed–in fact, I found myself on the ground, bleeding to death.

But mama didn’t raise a quitter–I got back up just in time to watch the sun rise over the lake. I had survived. Jenny didn’t.

But neither did Hans.

My Point

Okay, okay. We’re done. My point? The game has excellent ludonarrative when it all goes right. My only embellishments are that I tripped him over the cliff and the sun rose over the lake. Mechanically, he attacked me and I played the retaliate card–this reduced both us to 0 health. When at 0 health, you flip over your last health token to discover if you have a second wind. I did, he didn’t.

And the sun? Well, that’s just storytelling. I cannot praise the game enough for how well it simply sings when it goes right. I’ve had several games so far where it very much feels like a slasher flic.

But what about when it goes wrong? Well, the narrative still exists–from the cards to the actions to the surprising events of the game. It just isn’t very satisfying when a bunch of things go wrong in a row. Hence my point about the feature films: there’s two that are apparently really rough.

They’re the Haunting of Creech Manor and Slaughter in the Groves and I recommend avoiding both to start out. Haunting of Creech Manor introduces a new win condition with an enemy you cannot kill: the poltergeist. Unfortunately, that makes for a rather random boss with abilities that mostly just deny you something, like the ability to escape if you’re not at full health or reducing your movement. You spend your game searching for a little girl you need to free and hoping that: a) you find the girl quickly and b) the boss doesn’t draw something that slows you down, which it often does. I enjoyed playing this but it grew old quickly in a way Camp Happy Trails did not.

Slaughter in the Groves, which I do not have, is apparently just very oppressively difficult.

I would offer that you should do some research before buying additional feature films and do not treat the game as a collectible. Grab what you like and then turn around and mix and match. Throw The Eyeless into Camp Happy Trails–that’s a very different game than playing against it in Utopia. This means as you expand your collection, you really expand your options–like all of the best solo collectible games. This is the same reason I loved my time with Marvel Champions.

I’m on a work trip for the next week and a half, so I’ll likely have more thoughts on this game as I’m bringing my collection with me on the go. I doubt my opinion will change much. If you like solo games and can bear with some randomness, of which the game has a good deal, I think this one is worth a pickup–but start with the core set and Camp Happy Trails. I strongly recommend you do not buy more until you’ve played that and decided if it’s truly for you. Some folks bounce off the game due to all the dice rolling. As a wargamer who loves ludonarrative, I revel in it.

Who doesn’t love the opportunity to play the underdog giving it their all in a bid against their own personal Goliath? Who doesn’t love desperately rolling dice hoping for just the result needed to nail that kill? And who doesn’t love losing that kill to a final health token revealing the boss has three more health, while yours reveals none?

Probably a reasonable person, I guess. But not me–I’ve loved my time with this game so far and greatly look forward to more.