Final Girl Series 1 Ultimate Box Review

You've been doing your best to save the others, but through luck or just pure stupidity, they just kept getting themselves killed, and now you're the only one left. You've collected some gear as best you can, but now it's time to face whatever has been hunting you. Only one of you will leave. You are the final girl.

Final Girl, by Van Ryder Games, was an acclaimed Kickstarter launched in 2020, based on their already successful Hostage Negotiator system. Since its release, it's had 2 more Kickstarters, each combined into a series of releases. In this review, we will look at the Final Girl Series 1 Ultimate Box, which incorporates everything from Series 1 available at retail into a single handy storage box. We'll look at how to play Final Girl, what's in the Ultimate Box, and what our favorite parts of it are.

The Rules To Survive A Horror Movie

Final Girl is a modular system that begins with the Final Girl Core Box, which has the core rules and components. To play, a core box is combined with a feature film box, like Happy Trails Horror or Slaughter in the Groves. These feature film boxes include a unique killer, a unique location, and 2 final girls to choose from, which can all be mixed and matched with other feature film boxes in any combination of final girl, location, and killer to diversify your games as your collection expands.

The game itself is designed for solo play only, and while there are a lot of elements to track, it follows a simple flow that means it's hard to get something wrong or miss an element, even in your early games. The core of the gameplay revolves around action cards, which your final girl can play each turn. These allow your final girl to move, collect, and try to save victims, search for useful items which give bonuses to other actions, or attack the killer. To take an action, you play the card and make a horror roll. The number of dice rolled for the action is determined by the horror track, and each action card has 3 possible results, varying from failure, which usually has bad consequences, a single success, or a double success. 

The result of the horror roll against the action card shows how far the final girl can move, how many items you get when searching, or how much damage you can deal. The results for failing can be the final girl taking damage, the horror level rising, which means you roll fewer dice in future horror rolls, losing time, which can end your turn when the track reaches 0, or simply ending your turn immediately. 

After the action phase, the killer acts with a predetermined action on their killer card, and also with a random action drawn from the terror deck. The killer will generally pick a target, either a victim or the final girl, and move and attack them. Every time the killer takes out a victim, they become more powerful, eventually unlocking a dark power. The final girl can also unlock an ultimate ability by saving victims, and saving victims also means there are fewer on the location map for the killer to attack and power themselves up.

Each killer and location has a unique feel, with cards specific for them with some randomization for location setup, items, the finale, and the killer's dark power, which offers some variety game to game, even with the same box. This, combined with the 2 final girls in each box, means you will get a lot of replayability.

What's Your Favorite Scary Movie?

The Final Girl Series 1 Ultimate Box contains a huge amount of content. We'll detail here what each item contains and talk about our favorite products from the Ultimate Box below.

Final Girl Core Box

The Final Girl Core Box contains the core components you will use from game to game, including the rulebook, action cards for the final girls, tokens, and meeples for victims, the killer (which can be replaced by the killer miniatures in the Ultimate Box) and final girl (which can also be replaced by the miniatures in the Ultimate Box). It also contains a player board and some thick cards for holding areas (which can be replaced by the higher-quality game mats in the Ultimate Box).

Final Girl Feature Films Boxes

The Ultimate Box contains 5 feature film boxes, for a total of 5 locations, 5 killers, and 10 final girls (with 2 additional final girls and another killer we detail below) that can all be mixed and matched between sets. Each box also contains miniatures for the killer, to upgrade from the token in the core box and vehicles (that you can access with cards in the item and event decks), to upgrade from the tokens included in each feature film box. We'll discuss each feature film box below.

Final Girl: Happy Trails Horror

Happy Trails Horror features Camp Happy Trails as the location, a lakeside area that also has a boat as an item. Hans is the killer here, a sledgehammer-wielding maniac with a pig mask. The final girls are Laurie and Reiko, whose ultimate abilities are combat-focused to take the fight to the killer.

Final Girl: Haunting of Creech Manor

Haunting of Creech Manor includes Creech Manor as the location, a spooky 5-floor house with a helicopter that might appear as an event item. The Poltergeist is the killer here, and the players have to find and save a young girl named Carolyn from it. Alice and Selena are the final girls. For their ultimate abilities, Selena gets a bonus to search actions, and Alice gets to choose a specific action card that always rolls maximum dice.

Final Girl: Slaughter in the Groves

The Sacred Groves are the location for Slaughter in the Groves, and they are haunted by Inkanyamba the Avenger. When using this location and killer, players also track Divine Wrath and Killer Wrath, which have additional effects on the game as they try to take out the killer. The final girls are Adelaide and Barbara. As their ultimate abilities, Adelaide gets to choose from 3 immediate effects, which gives her great flexibility depending on the situation, and Barbara, who can bring victims with her into the killer's space and sacrifice them to boost her damage.

Final Girl: Carnage at the Carnival

Carnage at the Carnival takes place at the Carnival of Blood, a trap-filled location where you can find a golf buggy as part of an event. Geppetto, the puppet master, is the killer and is upgraded with puppet miniatures to replace the tokens in the box as part of the Ultimate Box. The final girls are Asami, who's ultimate makes her immune to traps and can choose between 2 item cards when she draws 1, and Charlie, who for their ultimate, can take 3 damage to draw the Critical Blow action card for a risky finsher against the killer.

Final Girl: Frightmare on Maple Lane

Frightmare on Maple Lane has Maple Lane as its location, a group of houses around a suburban intersection. It features a bike as an item card and a police car miniature for an event. The killer here is Dr Fright, and games against him take place on the game board when you're awake, and in the boiler room when you're asleep. The final girls are Nancy, who, as her ultimate, can swap out her final health token with another when she takes normal damage, and Sheila, who, for their ultimate, gains 2 time when discarding action cards for time.

Final Girl: S1 Game Mat bundle

The game mat bundle includes 2 neoprene game mats that have space for all the game areas, including the killer and location boards, horror and time track, and card deck areas, and comes in a thematic VCR-style box.

Final Girl: S1 Bonus Features Box

Along with the Feature and Core boxes, the Ultimate Box includes 2 other sets, the first is the Bonus Features Box, which includes several books:

• Final Girl: S1 Feature Films Rulebook - This handy book features all the killer and location looseleaf rules inserts from each of the Series 1 feature films, along with some achievement sheets for each.
• Final Girl: S1 Gruesome Death Books - These 5 books for each location contain gruesome details of kills for each terror card and some general death details, for each of the series 1 killers across all locations.
• Final Girl: Lore Book Series 1 - The lore book contains background details for all of the series 1 killers and final girls, along with some detailed setup for some linked scenario games

Final Girl: S1 Cast and Crew Box

The other bonus set in the Ultimate Box is the The Series 1 Cast and Crew, which is a handy storage box for some additional components, and to gather up all the final girl stat cards and their secret envelopes (which you can open for a bonus card once you complete a game with that final girl). The box also contains:

• Final Girl Miniatures - All of the killer miniatures are housed in their respective feature film boxes, but all of the final girl miniatures are here.
• Final Girl: Terror From Above (vignette) - This fantastic little box contains a killer (the birds!) but doesn't include a specific location (and as with all killers, can be used with any location you wish). It also includes a new final girl (who also has a miniature in this box), Melanie, whose ultimate allows her to take damage to deal 2 damage divided as you choose to enemies in your space (handy for dealing with birds).
• Final Girl: Birds Miniatures Pack - These miniatures replace the tokens in the Terror from Above vignette pack.
• Final Girl: Paula Promo Card - Paula is an additional final girl (who doesn't have a miniature here, but has a miniature included in a larger miniatures promo pack in the Series 3 Ultimate Box). This card allows you to play Paula Deming of YouTube Things Get Dicey fame.

Horror Movie Death Tropes

The Final Girl Series 1 Ultimate Box has a huge amount of content and replayability, but a few things stood out to me. Dr Fright and Maple Lane from Frightmare on Maple Lane are my favorite killer and location in this box. Both feel insanely thematic and capture the movie series (Nightmare on Elm Street) that they're based on very well. I tended to use the final girls from each box while playing the scenarios they came with, purely so I could get a feel for that box experience, but if I had to pick a favorite final girl, it would probably be Reiko for her combat prowess.

The Terror From Above and Lore Book Series 1 also stand out. Terror From Above for how simply and thematically well it captures the terror of bird attacks (you should also feel compelled to play Melanie in the scenario too, as she's rad), and the linked scenarios in the Lore book are my only way to play after a taster game for each killer and location. The setup and additional background for each scenario bring an already detailed experience to life, and when combined with the Grusome Deaths books, incredible.

Final Girl Series 1 Ultimate Box Final Thoughts?

If you've read the whole article above, you'll know I'm a huge fan of Final Girl and the sheer depth the Series 1 Ultimate Box gives you, but for a solo board game, the box is an investment, even for the sheer volume of content it gives you. If you've already tried Final Girl and love it, and solo gaming is your thing, then have at it, the sheer replayability you'll get out of this box is amazing. But if you've never tried it, it might be worth picking up the Core Box and a feature film to test the experience first, and either picking up all the elements separately once you know you're in, or trading them in, and picking up the Ultimate Box once you're sure.

Each of the feature films in the Ultimate Box is a great experience, and captures the theme very well, but when combined with the lore and scenarios book, the miniatures, and the gruesome deaths books, it all comes together to create the perfect horror gaming experience.

The copy of the Final Girl Series 1 Ultimate Box used to produce this review was provided by Asmodee UK.