Flash Review — Heat: Pedal to the Metal

Players: 1-6
Works well with just 2: Yes!
Solo quality: Outstanding
Age: 10+
Playtime: 30-60 min
Complexity: 5/10

It’s Formula 1 racing in the ‘60s, and you’re at the wheel of a powerful machine barrelling down the speedway. Everywhere you look, the track is filled with brightly colored cars. But hey, what’s one more hairpin turn at breakneck speed?

Heat comes with four different race tracks, six cute little cars and a deck of speed cards for every player, with each card showing a different speed—from 0 all the way to 5. The basic game couldn’t be simpler: shift up or down into the gear you want, play that many cards (from 1 to 4), and move your car as far as it’ll go without getting blocked. If you negotiate a corner during your move, check your speed (total value of the cards you played) against the corner’s speed limit, and pay 1 heat card for each speed increment over that limit.
(You’re rounding a 3-corner at speed 7? That just cost you four heat cards.)

Those heat cards start on your player board and represent your engine’s capabilities to “give a little more.” You begin the game with six, and gradually move them (“spend” them) to your discard pile to move faster or reach a gear you couldn’t normally shift into, in addition to overshooting corners as described above.
You’ll want to rid your deck of heat cards for two reasons: because those become clutter in your hand (possibly causing an overheat situation where your car doesn’t move at all for a turn) but also because if you no longer have heat cards on your player board, you can’t ask your engine for that extra kick you just needed to pass that green bastard on the straightaway. So make sure you shift down to gear 1 or 2 once in a while: those let you discard heat cards back to your player board. (And if you can time that with slowing down for a difficult corner, all the better!)

The game also features a solo mode where the flip of a single card drives all of the pilotless cars (from one to all 6, which means you could just watch the race unfold if you feel particularly lazy one evening). And they’re competitive, too! So much so that there’s no reason not to use a full complement of cars on the track, no matter the number of human players. Even the solo races are proving fun and tense, which is no small achievement.

And there are more options to explore: the garage module (customize your car!), the weather module (you afraid of a little snow at 290 km/h?), and the championship system (one race isn’t the whole story…).

I’m a big racing game fan, and Heat just might make it all the way to the top of my list. It manages to strike a death-defying balance between simplicity, meaningful decisions and excitement, all the while making the whole thing feel like a race. I can’t recommend it enough.

Most easily forgotten rule: You can decide to use adrenaline before or after you boost.

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