Designed by: Jeff Beck
In Getaway Driver, one player is the driver of the title, while the other controls the cops – and a potentially alarming number of vehicles, from the perspective of the driver.
The city the getaway driver – let’s say tit’s you – is escaping from is made up of tiles, randomly drawn from a bag. The game begins with a single starting tile, face-up, with the getaway car on it and two police cars nearby. Literally thrown onto the table are a bunch of swag bags which, should you reach them, will allow you to pick up more cards. You begin with a few in your hand already, and what the cards do is allow you to negotiate hazards – as you move from tile to tile, these crop up as opportunities to scupper the cops on your tail: a green traffic light means no hazard, red means there is a hazard, and amber is optional – play a card from your hand to make it so. The hazards are varied, and the card must match the hazard on the tile!
But if you play a card from your hand, there’s a chance you might hit a red light without having the card to navigate through it – in which case you’re stuck for a turn, and the police get a chance to catch you…
If you’re playing the cops, then your goal is obvious, but how you go about it isn’t necessarily just following the driver around the board, hoping they’ll slip up. You can anticipate which way they’ll go, cut them off, double-back and so on… And! A number of tiles show police badges – when these are flipped over, you take badges from a supply and can cash them in for more police vehicles – not just another car, but a motorcycle, riot van, even a helicopter… and thus, the net closes in on the driver. Your task is to catch them before the tiles run out – if they do, the driver can place the final escape tile and win…
None, right up until someone wins.
Low - there are decisions, and some are crucial. But they won't give you a headache.
As the driver, how to avoid the closing net. As the cops - well, how to close the net!
The tiles are drawn randomly so there's an element of unpredictability to badges and hazards. That said, they always allow the getaway driver to go in every direction, so the other variable is really about how the police go about their business...
2-2
Players
10+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
The child in me - never far from the surface - delights in the premise, the race, the little cars, the unfolding drama. The gamer in me - the old fart with opinions - enjoys it too, albeit inevitably there's a caveat or two. I was hoping for a little more variation on the tiles other than hazards/no hazards/maybe a hazard - but having said that, I can see that having tiles where movement is restricted would skew the game heavily in favour of the police player. And it's quite nicely balanced as it is. But I also think repeat plays would dull the game for me rather quickly, with the flip of the tile having less riding on it than I'd like - as the driver, it's more about going where the cops can't get you. But it's not pitched at the fart/opinions guy though - Getaway Driver is meant as a brief, light-hearted take on the movie action chases of yore, and succeeds on that scale just fine.