Thoughts from the Yellow Meeple:- SUPERHOT Card Game

Game: SUPERHOT Card Game

Publisher: Board & Dice

Designer: Manuel Correia

Year: 2017

SUPERHOT Card Game is a deck-building game based on the first person shooter video game SUPERHOT. I am not a video gamer, but Amy is, so we were excited to find out about this game at UK Games Expo 2017. Unfortunately we couldn’t demo the game at the convention and the explanation we were given of the game was extremely poor and long winded, so it’s taken us another 9 months to give it a try.

SUPERHOT is primarily a solo game, but we have been playing it in the two-player cooperative game mode. There are also two advanced gameplay, versus modes – one for two players and another for 2v1, that we have not tried. The cooperative game plays in three rounds, where each round you are trying to meet an increasing number objectives regarding the cards in your hand, the cards on the table and the actions you take. The objectives create an interesting puzzle, requiring a lot of hand management, a lot of cooperation and taking a few risks.

In the two player game only one person gets to use the slots on the board, but the board is just a piece of folded paper, so who cares? If you really like the game it might be worth seeking out the Kickstarter playmat.

Like most deck-building games, you start a game of SUPERHOT with a basic hand of cards. On your turn you can choose to attack people or dodge obstacles from the row of 6 face-up cards with the cards in your hand. Cards you defeat are yours for your hand next round. Cards you use are spent and go into the common discard. The number of cards you use will dictate how far the line of 6 cards moves - a mechanism that I understand tries to mimic the video game with quite a high level of success.

You are likely to play two low value cards to obtain one high value card, but since depleting your deck is a loss condition, you need to be aware of also picking up some low value cards just to keep your deck full. You will also lose if the enemies get out of control and shoot you too often.

A starting hand of cards with their differing dodge and attack abilities.

There's definitely a pretty steep learning curve to this game, but I'm glad we didn't give up. Once you've mastered the rules it isn't actually that complicated and the game becomes a very interesting puzzle. I would not describe it as a typical deck-building game. I am very rarely choosing cards to add to my deck, I'm more often just figuring out the best way to survive or meet an objective and the result of that is some cards entering my deck and some cards leaving it.

I really enjoy the puzzle that SUPERHOT offers as a two player game. There's a large deck of objectives to explore but once I've seen them all, there is a chance that I will feel that I'm done with the game. It is apparent that it might be even better as a solo game, but I've tried playing solo and it is just not an enjoyable experience for me with any board game. I like the additional layer of planning in the two player cooperative game, where one turn I might choose to do nothing, or set something up so that my partner can achieve an objective in the following turn. I'm glad we gave SUPEHOT the chance to prove itself and for the Yellow Meeple its a 7/10.

SUPERHOT Card Game was a review copy provided by Asmodee UK. It is available for an RRP of £19.99 at your friendly local game store or can be picked up at http://www.365games.co.uk/.