Happy Trails Horror: Final Girl Exp.

Ah, the sweet smell of nostalgia. It’s always nice to look back at the past and think about how great things were. As a child, I must have spent hours in our local video shop looking at the lurid covers of what would become the video nasties of the 1980s; films like Cannibal Ferox, Driller Killer, and The Beyond. My friends and I would chat about these films with the shop owner, a man affectionately given the name ‘Creepy’. As time went on, I convinced my mum and dad to rent out films like Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th  and I got to see them a few years before I was 18. Naughty boy. Despite being very tame now, I was thrilled at the terrifying music and the gruesome deaths. I loved the latter film so much I bought the C64 game of it.

But nostalgia can be a tricksy beast. Some things in the past, like video shops, were great and I’d love to see their return. Others were terrible and should be left well alone; Friday the 13th on the C64, I’m looking at you.

So where does Final Girl: The Happy Trails Horror fit in? It’s nostalgic, harking back to a time of masked killers rampaging around summer camps. But is it any good or is it just rose-tinted spectacularly bad?

What Is Final Girl All About

Please note that the photos here contain components from both the Final Girl Core Box and also the Happy Trails Horror product I’m reviewing here. You need both to play the game. The Final Girl system requires the Core box plus one of the many Feature Film boxes like The Happy Trails Horror. This box contains two final girls (Reiko and Laurie), the killer Hans (a thinly-veiled Jason Vorhees), and the Camp Happy Trails location (again, a thinly-veiled Camp Crystal Lake). With all of the ingredients in place, let’s see how it plays.

How Does It Play

On your turn of Happy Trails Horror, you will play cards to help you move around the map, search locations, and attack the killer amongst other things. The twist is that to activate a card’s power you have to roll some dice, this will normally be two but this can change. If you get one success then an okay power will activate. Two successes are very nice and will give you a souped-up power. But no successes mean you get the terrible action which can often end up hurting you. Fortunately, some die faces have an icon showing two cards. This means that you can give up two cards to get a success so at least there’s some luck mitigation. You’ll travel around the map, leading victims to safety, collecting useful items, legging it from the killer, and eventually building up the courage to go and have a pop at him.

The Happy Trails Horror events add a bit of flavour to this. There are a fair few events and they all change the way the game plays. In one game, I had a girlfriend who gave me the lovely bonus of rolling an extra die. When it came to the end, I wanted to sacrifice her to the killer to secure the win but my wife chastised me and told me I had to save her, obviously planning ahead to a time in real life when we will face an insane pig mask wearing serial killer.

But wait a minute, you say, isn’t Happy Trails Horror a solo game? How come you’re playing it with your wife? Well, yes, it is a solo game but we play it as a co-op, taking it in turns to roll the dice and discussing what to do. There are no official rules for doing this but it works perfectly well. We enjoy it anyway.

How Much Luck Is There

One thing to point out in Happy Trails Horror is that luck definitely plays a part in this game. You do get better after multiple plays but sometimes the killer just comes out guns blazing – or should that be axe-chopping? – and slaughters you within about five minutes. But dust yourself down, put on a few Hello Kitty plasters and set it up for another game. The luck factor didn’t bother me as it is a solo game. When luck was against me, I tried even harder to beat it. I like a challenge.

Is It Any Good

So, is it just a silly little bit of nostalgia or is it actually a good game? It is certainly nostalgic. When I opened the box, it took me back to my childhood. It reminded me so much of opening the aforementioned C64 game and the promise of bloodletting contained therein. It is so reminiscent because they are both abstract versions of the Friday the 13th film. The huge difference is that Final Girl delivers on the gameplay front.

It is so thematic. You really feel like you’re sneaking around a camp trying to stay away from a killer who is dispatching victims left, right and centre. The items help with this; a bow lets you shoot the killer from an adjacent space and a bear trap will stop him in his tracks and give him a nasty graze.

The game has a nice arc. Finding a good weapon is usually a good idea in the early game as is trying to lower the terror level so that you get to roll three dice rather than the usual two. When you save victims, they go on to your character’s card, giving you a little bonus and progressing you to the point when you can flip the card and get your special power.

Again, this is good to do as early as you can. Later in the game, you may hit the killer from a distance to chip away at his health or prepare yourself for a really big attack.  The game always ends in a final battle between you and the killer where one of you will walk away victorious and the other will be lying in a pool of gore. Plus, there’s always a chance that the killer, or indeed you, will come back from the dead for one last go. It’s all very cinematic despite the fact that you’re moving coloured meeples around a tiny map.

In Conclusion

If you have any affinity for the Friday the 13th series then I think you’ll have a good time here. Equally, if you like 80s horrors, you’ll feel at home. Solo gamers with a horror aversion will have to think carefully before buying this, it may not be for you. It is a great solo game but a lot of this for me comes from the thematic ties. I love doing the double bill of watching one of the Friday the 13th films and then following it up with a pleasant game of Final Girl.

I’m looking forward to playing more of the feature film boxes, especially ones that I can link up with a viewing of the film the box is based on. Plus, the sets can be mixed and matched. Choose a killer from one set, a final girl from another, and a location from yet another and you’re ready to go. Lots of replayability with this series.

So, prepare yourself for a terrifying experience filled with weapons, sneakery, and a lot of blood. Will you as the final girl make it out alive or will Crazy Ralph have the last word?

“Doomed… You’re all doomed.” – Crazy Ralph 1980