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Survive a slasher movie in Final Girl, a single-player horror board game from the maker of Detective: City of Angels

Lights! Camera! Murder!

Star in a series of classic horror film scenarios from a haunted house to a bloody carnival in Final Girl, the next board game from Detective: City of Angels maker Van Ryder Games.

Inspired by a history of heroines in horror movies, Final Girl is a horror board game in which the player controls the potential victims of four possible villains in a selection of scary scenarios.

Featuring four different maps - a campsite, haunted house, carnival and holiday destination - Final Girl is a solo board game that sees the lone player’s characters searching for weapons and tools whilst attempting to escape their terrifying foe.

Including villains such as Hans the Butcher, a killer with a taste for human flesh, and Geppetto the Puppet Master - a mastermind who’s pulling all the strings - Final Girl has the player laying down cards to gather the tools they need to defeat their chosen nemesis, alongside saving possible victims and unlocking new character abilities.

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Every action made takes time, with each hero turn having a finite amount of time before it’s time for the villain to make their move. Villains navigate the map to trap the player characters, either playing their own villain cards or playing environmental cards to do damage. Every villain and environment has its own unique deck of cards, with players able to mix and match both to create an entirely new combination of challenges.

Players win Final Girl by successfully gathering all the tools they need and defeating the villain once and for all. However, allow the villain to kill every player character on the board and the heroines lose the game.

The core version of Final Girl features four separate feature film boxes, each including a different set of heroines, a different villain and a different environment.

The designers behind Final Girl are Evan Derrick - creator of horror board game Dark Moon and Detective: City of Angels - and AJ Porfirio, who designed the solo board game that the Final Girl system is based on, Hostage Negotiator.

Other than Detective: City of Angels, Van Ryder Games is known for creating semi-co-op board game Skull Takes: Full Sail! and the Wild West-inspired Saloon Tycoon.

The Final Girl Kickstarter campaign is live until May 16th, with a pledge of $35 (£29) getting backers a copy of the core game. It’s estimated to arrive sometime in May 2021.

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Alex Meehan avatar
Alex Meehan: After writing for Kotaku UK, Waypoint and Official Xbox Magazine, Alex became a member of the Dicebreaker editorial family. Having been producing news, features, previews and opinion pieces for Dicebreaker for the past three years, Alex has had plenty of opportunity to indulge in her love of meaty strategy board games and gothic RPGS. Besides writing, Alex appears in Dicebreaker’s D&D actual play series Storybreakers and haunts the occasional stream on the Dicebreaker YouTube channel.
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