Final Girl is a game system created for solo board gamers, themed around classic and modern-day horror movie tropes.  In order to play, you must own the Core Box as well as at least one Feature Film.  Each Feature Film comes with one Villain, one Location, and two Final Girl Cards that players can mix-and-match to add variety to future gaming sessions.  Click here for more information on what exactly you get with the Core Box.

For these Feature Film reviews, I will be looking at a handful of elements for each film and rating each element from 1 to 5, culminating in an overall rating at the end of the review.  These ratings will be highly dependent on how I feel about the specific film being covered when compared to the other films I’ve played at the time so take the ratings with a grain of salt.  But hopefully, the review will provide you more context on each film so you can choose which ones are right for you.

I’m going to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever actually watched A Nightmare on Elm Street.  Sure, the movie was released in theatres when I was a mere 7 months old, so it’s not like I was going to stroll to the nearest cineplex and take in a showing, but it isn’t like I haven’t had plenty of time since then to watch it.  I remember kids dressing up as Freddy Krueger for Halloween and the character being highly popularized, along with Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees.  Maybe it was this ubiquitous that caused me to feel like I knew enough about the movies and didn’t need to watch them.

Fast forward close to 40 years, and I find myself browsing the different editions that Final Girl Season One has to offer.  While most of the versions of Final Girl are easily recognizable as to which IP they are loosely based on, none are more recognizable than Frightmare on Maple Lane.  The burned and scarred visage of Dr. Fright looms on the cover.  Elsewhere, players will find him clad in a sweater vest, holding a pitchfork, both reminiscent of Krueger’s striped sweater and bladed glove from the movies.

Each Final Girl Killer has a special ability that sets them apart from other villains in the series.  Dr. Fright comes equipped with a unique deck of cards, called The Boiler Room Deck.  When playing against Dr. Fright, your Final Girl will start her adventure while Awake.  During this period of time, the Final Girl may not hurt Dr. Fright but he can also not hurt her, though he can still slaughter Victims around the board.  When various Terror Cards are drawn, the Final Girl is forced to become Asleep and enter The Boiler Room, a type of dream world that the Final Girl is going to want to escape.  While she is Asleep, Victims will no longer follow her around the board and both her and the Killer will start being able to deal and receive damage.

When Asleep, the player will use the four card Boiler Room Deck to try to escape Dr. Fright’s dream world without taking damage, or at least minimizing how much she takes.  So how does this work?  Each card is split into four quadrants, with each card having an illustration of Dr. Fright in one of the quadrants.  The player will slide the top card (a sort of cover card) left, right, up, or down to uncover two of the quadrants from the card below.  If there is no illustration of Dr. Fright on the card that was just revealed, the Final Girl takes no damage and is one step closer to escaping back into the real world.  If there is an illustration, then she removes one Heart from her life meter.  She can then decide to uncover the next card or wait until the next turn.  Eventually, all four cards will have been revealed and the Final Girl is able to Awake, given that she didn’t take enough damage in the dream world to die.

While the idea for The Boiler Room is one of the most creative that I’ve seen in the Final Girl series, the execution is a little lacking.  Sliding a card one way, and not revealing too much of the card underneath, nothing to say about the remainder of the deck, doesn’t work as well as it should and can be cumbersome.  Even with this slight knock, I love this main aspect of Dr. Fright and the rest of his Dark Power Cards and Finale Cards only help to make him one of my favorite Killers to play against.

Killer Rating – 4.5/5

Location – Maple Lane

Not only did the designers come up with a killer concept for the Killer, but they also pulled out all the stops when it came to the Maple Lane location packaged in this edition.  In a typical Final Girl location, there are three spaces that the player can use to Search for Item Cards.  On Maple Lane, there are four quadrants containing three houses a piece.  Each of these houses acts as a location to Search for an Item Card, adding up to a whopping 12 spaces to utilize.  In classic Final Girl fashion, there are a few catches.

First, each house can only be searched once and once searched, a token emblazoned with an “X” is placed on the house, forcing players to make their way to neighboring houses.  Secondly, if a house is already inhabited by at least one Victim, the Final Girl is not allowed to enter by using a normal Walk or Sprint Action Card.  Instead, this edition features a new Action Card called Convince.  There are two copies of this card and when played, the Final Girl makes a Horror Roll to see if the Victim will let her into their house or if they’ll turn her away, afraid she is the psycho on a murderous rampage.

While the Convince card can make it supremely difficult to rescue Victims when compared to other locations, I love the creativity and out of box thinking that was put into Maple Lane and find myself coming back to it, time and time again.

Location Rating – 4/5

Unlike other editions of Final Girl, there are actually quite a few of the Event Cards that end up being advantageous to the player.  Between a Cop Car Token that patrols the intersection, able to pick up Victims and rush them to an exit, to an event geared towards helping you out with those pesky Convince Horror Rolls, the Event Cards don’t give players quite the beating that they might be used from other editions.

While the Item Deck contains the normal weapon types that are found in other version of the game, there are some cool twists (such as the Odds and Ends Card) that allows you to booby trap a house, damaging the Killer if he unwittingly walks through the doorway.  Some of the cards are just “meh” in my opinion (such as the two copies of the Crucifix Card) but all-in-all, the Items are fun enough to employ.

Event / Item Rating – 4/5

Final Girl Cards

If there was a weakness (albeit a minor one) to this edition, it would be the two Final Girl options.  This edition comes with Sheila and Nancy, the latter being surprisingly hard to use as she only starts with four Health and has to rescue five Victims to enable her special power, which isn’t even all that great.  Sheila fares slightly better but two of her bonuses for saving Victims is to put certain Action Cards directly into her hand and I just don’t care for these type of bonuses, but that might be personal preference.

Final Girl Card Rating – 3.5/5

Conclusion

I think it’s safe to say that, at the time of this writing, Frightmare on Maple Lane is my favorite Final Girl edition.  It adds plenty of twists and turns to the normal formula but without being overly convoluted.  It might not be the best starter edition for a new person to the series but I would definitely recommend it as the second Feature Film pickup for any Final Girl fans.

Carnage at the Carnival Rating – 4/5