Don’t Make a Sound: Final Girl

This Feature Film box is a homage to two film franchises about having to keep quiet: A Quiet Place and Tremors. I watched the original Tremors just a couple of weeks ago and it is an absolute classic. The script is so tight with not an ounce of fat. The effects are amazing, full of matte paintings, miniatures, and full-blown animatronic creatures. I was very excited when I saw that Tremors was going to come to the Final Girl series of games. I would have liked to have seen Stumpy to have been the big baddie, but instead we get one of the creatures from A Quiet Place. I think that’s true, I can barely remember the film.

So, despite the villain being ho-hum, is Final Girl: Don’t Make A Sound any good?

What Is Final Girl All About

Please note that the photos here contain components from both the Final Girl Core Box and also Don’t Make A Sound. 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 (Meghan and Ronda), the killer The Eyeless and the Utopia location (Utopia – Perfection. Get it?) With all of the ingredients in place, let’s see how it plays.

How Does it Play

You can skip this section if you are familiar with how Final Girl works. On your turn, 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.

One thing to point out 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 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.

What’s New In This Feature Film

There are two main new mechanics: noise and the sand snakes. Everything you do makes noise. When you play a card, you move the noise marker up one spot. If you use an item that could be heard in the same space as you, such as the pole vault, then you advance the noise marker an extra spot. Use a gun or a whistle, something that could be heard at a distance, and it goes up by three. Certain Terror cards then reference the noise level, and, funnily enough, cause bad things to happen if it is too high.

The sand snakes appear at the end of every round. You turn over two sand snakes cards and they will pop up in that location and kill victims, or wound you or the killer. There are two places where you can avoid being hit by the sand snakes: two rocky areas. Very thematic. Over time, you get to know which locations are safe as there is just one card for each. To combat that, there is a card that makes you reshuffle the deck when it appears.

Is It Any Good

Don’t Make A Sound is 5% A Quiet Place and 95% Tremors. Shame it wasn’t 100%. Even so, it is so thematic. It really feels like you are playing a Tremors game. Events help with this. Burt and Heather from the original Tremors appear thinly disguised and give you bonuses. You get events that cause earthquakes and landslides. Melvyn also makes an appearance as a defiant teenager.

I enjoyed the sand snakes although they add yet more chaotic luck to the mix. Some games, they seemed to pick off victims with unerring accuracy and the killer was at its maximum after no time. There is some mitigation, in that you can go back to spaces they have already been, and some items help you keep them at bay.

As for the noise mechanic, it hasn’t had that much of an effect on my games so far. I’ve had some turns where I’ve been really noisy, shooting with the elephant gun and playing loads of cards, then the Terror card comes out and it’s got nothing to do with noise. I got away with it scot-free. Over subsequent games, it may have more of an impact. Maybe I’ve just been lucky so far.

In Conclusion

If you have any affinity for Tremors, and you like the Final Girl system, then this is a no-brainer. If you don’t, it won’t change your mind about the game. I’ve had a lot of fun playing it, and there is one Terror card that is truly shocking. When it first came out, I wondered whether I would ever play with it in the deck again, but now, I quite like it. It’s random and can add some crazy difficulty. Good for a challenge, though.

For a good night of entertainment, I would recommend watching Tremors first and the playing this. It’s good fun.