Heat: Pedal to the Metal Review

Heat: Pedal to the Metal will be getting a tunnels expansion later this year, and in anticipation of that coming, we were sent the base game to try out and review. I’ve never been a huge fan of racing games, likely because I’m not very good at them. However, after a few rounds of Heat, I can safely say that perhaps some racing games are in fact for me. What I think wins me over here is the simplicity of the experience – I find most racing games over complicated as designers work towards realism, but with Heat, I feel right at home.

In Heat: Pedal to the Metal, players will use cards to race around a track, attempting to win (obviously) while not spinning out on corners, overheating their engines, or becoming overwhelmed by stress. It’s a really nifty system that uses card play as its main mechanic, while doing a decent job simulating what I would assume are the ins and outs of a regular race. With four courses to choose from, I also enjoyed the choice and variety that the game provided. It’s not usual for games to have double sided boards with unique sides usable by ALL players. It’s even more rare to get TWO boards in the box!

There are a few systems at play here surrounding speed, stress and overheating, but I found it just enough to keep things engaging, while not being too much for even novice board game players to handle. And the logic behind these systems makes sense as well. Push your car too hard and you might overheat, which adds cards to your hands that won’t benefit your race or strategy at all. Head into a corner too fast and you’ll spin out. These are just universal concepts that are easy to understand – they are logical problems with defined causes and effects.

There is a really nice balance here of various mechanics, but again it is not overly complicated. You shift up and down gears, shifting more giving you Heat cards in your discard pile. You then check what gear you are in (1-4) and have the option to play that many cards. Again, as you add more heat to your deck, you dilute the cards you draw and ultimately the card you play, so there is a defined give and take you need to be constantly aware of. What I like about the gear system, though, is that you have to play as many cards as your gear indicates – that means you cannot play only 2 cards if you are in third gear – you must play three. Cards are how you’ll progress along the track and generally more cards means more speed. The fun here is balancing these two things as you head into corners, where too much speed would be a bad thing.

Heat cards are wasted cards in your hand, and stress cards will require you to draw more cards and add more speed than you might have wanted – this could be great on a straightaway where you are trying to move ahead of the pack, but would be a disaster in a corner. That’s the fun of Heat, balancing those things.

It’s the ease of play and quick pace of the experience that makes the game so enjoyable in my opinion. Even if you are losing, and perhaps losing bad, the games go so quickly. Even when they don’t, there is enough unpredictability to allow players farther behind to catch up in certain circumstances. This helps keep the game balanced, but also introduces a bit of luck that some players might not enjoy. I found there was enough strategic thinking to offset the luck of the draw – after all, you choose to add heat cards to your deck, or play stress cards in potentially devastating circumstances.

For myself, it’s the relative simplicity that Heat offers that makes it so compelling. While racing games aren’t likely to become my favorite type of game any time soon, I’ll almost always be willing to sit down for a game of Heat: Petal to the Metal.