Fireside Games Announces Cooperative Firefighting Game Hotshots

Fireside Games announced their newest game, Hotshots. The cooperative, press your luck game is designed by Justin De Witt, who created Castle Panic and Star Trek Panic.

Hotshots puts players in the role of wildfire fighters. Each person will take on a specific role, Crew Boss, Spotter, Swamper, and Sawyer, each of which will have their own special abilities.

Players will be rolling dice in an attempt to put out fires on forest tiles. The more combinations you match on the tile, the better you fight the fire. But if you bust and fail to match at least 3 of the 6 symbols on the tile, the fire will grow.

You’ll also be able to take other measures to try to fight the fires, like cutting Firebreaks, which helps prevent fires from spreading due to wind. Another way to help fight the flames is to maneuver different vehicles like an air tanker or brush rig.

At the end of each player’s turn, they will draw a fire card, which will change the wind strength, increase the strength of flames on some tiles, and/or start fires. If you have too many flame tokes on a tile, it will become Scorched and the tile will be lost.

More than likely you’ll have to lose some tiles, but you’ll want to prioritize some tiles over the others. For instance, some terrain tiles are tied to the player’s special abilities.

If 8 tiles or your Fire Camp become Scorched, everyone loses. But if you manage to extinguish the fire, you all win together.

The Game Includes:

• 4 Crew Cards
• 15 Firebreak Tokens
• 29 Fire Cards
• 4 Firefighter Tokens and Stands
• 6 Firefighting Dice
• 25 Flame Tokens
• 16 Reward Tokens
• 19 Terrain Tiles
• 3 Vehicle Tokens
• 1 Wind Marker and Stand
• 1 Rulebook

Hotshots is for 1-4 players, takes about an hour to play, and will be released May 31, 2017. So far there’s been no news about what the game will cost.

Caylie Sadin

Caylie is a writer and all around nerd. Board games have slowly become a passion and have taken over most of her shelves at this point. Some of her favorite games are Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Battlestar Galactica, and Mansions of Madness 2nd edition.