About
Flash Point: Fire Rescue is a cooperative race against time board game designed by Kevin Lanzing. Players work together to put out fires, eliminate hazmat threats, and rescue people (and pets) from a burning building while it crashes down around them! The beginner rules allow you and your friends to jump into the game easily, and once you’ve mastered those, you can move on to the advanced rules.
Full disclosure: This page contains affiliate links, which means that if you click the link and make a purchase, I get a commission at no cost to you. I only recommend products I truly enjoy, in the hopes that you’ll enjoy them, too.
GARLIC
Here at Cedar Creek Games, we rate games based on the GARLIC scale, a 6-point system to give you a good idea whether this game will flavor your collection with delightful taste, or whether it will just stink up the whole house.
A game can score up to 10 points in each of six categories, to give you a well-rounded view of the game. Then, we’ll total up the scores at the end. Let’s go!
Gameplay – 8/10
Each turn, players spend action points to move around the board, douse smoke and fire, move hazmat markers, and drag peoples’ unconscious bodies from the building. At the end of each turn, smoke is generated randomly on the board, which sometimes turns into fire, and sometimes causes an explosion.
This is a great, unique element to this game. Many times, you’ll spend the first few rounds putting out fires until there’s almost nothing left. You’ll start moving hazmat and collecting survivors, leaving one side of the board to slowly gather smoke, and before you know it, BOOM! An explosion causes a wave of fire to sweep through the building.
This random generation method adds a lot of dynamics to the game, and always keep it exciting. The only downside here is that, unlike in co-ops like Pandemic and Forbidden Desert, there is no ultimate clock mechanic–you have as much time as you need to finish the game.
In essence, you could have 3/4 of your team shambling around and putting out smoke as needed while the one person rescues people. It would take a long time this way… but it would work, and it wouldn’t be very exciting. Veteran gamers will discover this tactic early on, and it will make the easier difficulty levels seem like a walk in the park.
So we’re docking a couple points there, but the higher difficulty levels should always prove to be a challenge, even for experienced players. Plus, the action points mechanic, the random smoke generation, the design of the levels, the use of doors, interacting with objects, and so much more in this game are so excellently designed that it still gets a good score.
Artwork – 6/10
Some of the artwork in this game is fantastic! The player cards and firefighters all look exceptional, with realistic and dramatic art.
… but that’s about it.
The game boards themselves are a bit lackluster, with pretty simplistic artwork to represent the buildings. They’re in pretty stark contrast with the firefighter cards, and while they’re fairly realistic, they don’t have that same dark, dramatic feel.
Meanwhile, the tokens are on another level altogether. They all feature very simplistic design, using what looks like plain, vector-based artwork done by a freshman graphic designer. They didn’t even bother to put faces on the people!
If you’re lucky enough to get a later edition of the game, the firefighter pawns actually look like firefighters. Otherwise, they’re just standard meeples. And no one feels heroic as a meeple.
Rules – 10/10
The rulebook was very well written, including different sections for the basic game, the advanced rules, the firefighter role-specific rulings, and even a “quick start guide” on the back cover to help you jump into the game quickly! Everything is written well, and I don’t think my play group has ever had an issue in the game we couldn’t resolve with the rulebook.
Luck v. Strategy – 9/10
Luck can play a big role in this game. Rolling for smoke in the same space multiple times in a row can be devastating, especially if it creates multiple explosions before you can get there to put it out.
On the other hand, if players stay spread out on the board and keep at least half their force on fire-extinguishing duty, most emergencies are pretty easy to mitigate. The real trick here is not getting greedy by ignoring smoke and focusing only on rescue.
This game is about 40% luck, 60% strategy, a pretty good mix.
Intuitiveness – 9/10
This game has quite a few rules. which can make it a challenge for new players to learn. Fortunately, the rules are well written, the beginners game strips out a lot of the complicated parts to make it easy to jump in, and it even includes some cheat sheet cards that show turn order on one side, and a list of actions on the other. Between all of these, it shouldn’t be too complicated to pick up and play.
Component Quality – 10/10
Artwork aside, the components in this game are all excellent quality. The tokens are made of a nice, thick cardboard, the box and board are both durable, and the cards are sturdy as well. Well done here!
Summary
This is one of my favorites in my board game collection. My weekly game group loves it, and the rules are intuitive enough that I feel comfortable bringing it to new groups as well (the only people that would have a hard time learning it are non-gamers). There is never a time that I’m not interested in playing this game (hooray for double negatives!).
There are already almost half a dozen expansions for this game (as of now), each one including extra double-sided boards, new components, and new rules, which means tons of replayability.
The game only really suffers in the art department, but that’s easy enough to overlook. Multiple difficulty levels, variant missions in the rulebook, and a generally exciting gameplay make this game an exceptional choice, in my book!
Flash Point: Fire Rescue gets a GARLIC score of 87! This is definitely one to light your candles by.
Similar Games You Might Love
For other awesome co-operative games, check out these recommendations below!
Pandemic
|
Forbidden Island
|
Forbidden Desert
|
