Hotshots, reviewed

This cooperative wildfire-fighting board game is worth your attention.

Like fire, dice are unpredictable.

Or, if they’re not unpredictable, they’re at least unreliable. That metaphor is at the core of Hotshots, a cooperative game released in late 2017 by Fireside Games. In Hotshots, designed by Justin De Witt, each player controls a firefighter trying to save a forest from immolation.

Gameplay & Mechanics

In Hotshots, you’ll be fighting fires by rolling six dice — or fewer, if you got caught on a tile when a fire got out of control. It sounds simple, but with each roll, you have to be able to add at least one ‘locked’ die to match the tile you’re on. If you can’t, and you don’t have somebody providing support with you, you’ll add more flames where you are. After each turn, the fire expands. Let one spot go too long, and you’ll end up with a chain of scorched tiles, and if that happens, you’ll lose the game.

Hotshots seems like it’s going to be an easy game when you first unbox it. Roll some dice, you think. It can’t be that hard to match four, five or six icons. And really, it’s not that hard. Two of the roles let you flip some dice faces over, and that helps with the illusion. But, you see, if you screw up — if you press your luck just a little too hard, thinking you can fight the fire with more efficiency, you’ll end up with even more flames surrounding you than before.

Some cooperative games encourage intense planning and careful play. Hotshots doesn’t. Instead, it encourages you fighting the fire a little recklessly. There’s always a sense that you can do more. After all, if you don’t try to extinguish all of the fire you can in one turn, you might as well let the game win, right? It’s that feeling that really makes Hotshots compelling.

One concern I do have with Hotshots is about its variability, because even though the map changes from game to game, it doesn’t change the core premise much at all. The idea that your map shape is something you control during setup does mitigate that. I played with multiple shapes, and I enjoyed the experience. Playing on a roughly round map is a different experience than playing on a longer, skinnier map.

Rules & Rulebook

Parsing the rules was easily my least favorite part of Hotshots. It’s not that things aren’t explained well in Hotshots, it’s that I think it could really do with a bit of reorganization and cross-referencing. A quick reference guide with symbols would really help, I suspect — it’s not even that it’s a complicated game. It’s really not. But there are steps and situations to remember, and they’re not available at a glance anywhere.

The rules are pretty easy to grok, even if the rulebook obfuscates that fact. On my first play-through, I flipped back and forth a few times. On my second, I looked at a few things for clarification, but I wasn’t glued to it. On my third, I didn’t even need to reference it. That’s the sort of thing that really helps a game. If I’d continued referencing at the same rate, I’d know there was a problem for a game with simple gameplay.

Components

I’m a sucker for chunky plastic tokens, and there really is no beating Hotshots’ flame tokens. Seriously — these things feel great in your hand. I was almost excited to place them on a tile, with that feeling only diminished by the fact that, well, I wasn’t supposed to feel good about it. The custom dice are nice, too, but I keep going back to the flames. Amazing.

Aside from that, my only complaint is that the tile design could be stronger. Some fire cards you draw — embers — have you add flame tokens to a specific tile, but every time I drew one, I felt like I was hunting around the board to figure out where it was.

Conclusion

With more love given to the rulebook, I really do think my thinking about the game could be a bit higher. I enjoyed Hotshots, but the number of times I flipped back and forth in the rulebook just got to be a bit much.

If you’re going to play this, I’d recommend finding a quick reference player aid. I designed one just for that purpose, which you can download from BoardGameGeek. Ideally, it should speed up your first couple plays, after which point, you probably won’t need it much at all.

Hotshots does give you a fair bit of game for the price. There are rules for more advanced play built-in. The biggest of my complaints goes away after a few plays with the same group, because you’re likely to remember the rules. Like I said, it’s not an overly complex game; it just has a few stumbling blocks as you learn that make it a less seamless experience than it could be.

This certainly will not be a game for those looking for a deep, crunchy board game. You won’t be sinking your teeth into Hotshots. Instead, this is a good option for families, who will often have players of varying skill levels. Decisions can be easily talked through, and that opens the audience up in nice ways.

With an MSRP under $40, Hotshots is a good option for the gaming family that’s already well-acquainted with some of the classics. Its cooperative play isn’t overly complex, but it does present difficulties in play that provide a good challenge.

Disclosure: I was provided with a review copy of Hotshots by Fireside Games.