Is Bomb Busters the playful masterpiece of the year?

With colossal content and an original approach to cooperative play, Bomb Busters brings together immense qualities. Its intensity and uncompromising gameplay place it directly in the race for all the prestigious gaming prizes.

Rather convinced by the look of the game and its cooperative gameplay which seemed to work well, I was finally able to play Bomb Busters. A game that puts you in the armor of bomb disposal, published by Cocktail Games in . And it was a huge slap in my face. A slap in the face which put an end to a kind of playful depression in which I had been immersed for some time. Here’s why.

What are Bomb Busters?

Bomb Busters is a cooperative gamein which players are deminers, responsible for defusing bombs. And for that, you must definitely not cut the red wire! Each player has a strip in front of him, on which he places tiles showing threads of value 1 to 12. These threads are mainly blue, sometimes yellow, and depending on the mission, there are one or more red threads.

The objective of the game is to cut all the wires except the red wire. And for that, you will have to discard the threads of all the players. On your turn, you will designate a thread and its value for another player, and if you are not mistaken, each reveals their thread thus cut.

Be careful not to point out the red wire, otherwise the bomb will explode and the game is lost! The game offers 66 missions (!) who will play with these basic rules. I’m not going to spoil anything for you, but the variety and renewal of the gameplay is incredible.

The shock

This article is not an opinion, because I will take the time to advance much further in the 66 missions that the game offers. On the other hand, I can tell you about my first impressions, and my experience on the first few parts .

I opened the box on game night last Saturday, I only played this for 4 hours. And yesterday, another games evening at the Le Décompte shop in , and I played there again for 5 hours. During my break this lunchtime, another hour. So that’s 10 hours of Bomb Busters. I don’t want to play anything else.

Through a combination of editorial qualities, gameplay, and what happens at the table, Bomb Busters is addictive. Very. Its clear gameplay, 2 pages of rules, its possibilities and its progression curve…the game is incredible. And again, I say this without knowing it in its entirety, because Bomb Busters offers a mind-blowing replayability of 66 missions. I’m on mission 7. The end of the tutorial is 8! The size of the content scares me in advance.

I don’t know yet if I’m right to think that, I’m missing hours of flying Bomb Busters to be so categorical. But an idea begins to germinate in my brain: Bomb Busters is an absolute masterpiece.

The said and the unsaid

Why a masterpiece? Because Bomb Busters employs a grammar the depth of which is revealed gradually and collectively. I’m not going to push the analogy very far because I’m saving it for my review, but Bomb Busters pushes to the extreme the mechanics present in the big games that are Hana-bi et Sync or Swim.

Every mistake must be a lesson. Every piece of information you give is of capital importance, in what it says, and especially in what it doesn’t say. Bomb Busters climbs the steps of the mountain of deduction with panache, and every element of the game design pushes in this direction.

When you take one tile and not another, it’s important. When you choose a value, whether the other player has it or not is almost secondary. You will cut and cross-check information, and have to trust the clues of other players. Sometimes the game will push you to make a difficult choice.

A pressure sets in, dull and powerful, and each turn becomes an enigma. Which play should I do first? Should I or can I take a risk? Did I cross-check all the information correctly?

Freshness and intensity

The author Hisashi Hayashi therefore adds this nugget to a very cool ludography, which includes bangers like Yokohama, Trains or even the fabulous trick game Gummi Trick! Bomb Busters is a real boost to current gaming production, for several reasons:

  • the edition is not deluxified for nothing
  • the content is colossal
  • the game is not neither consensual nor complacent
  • the gameplay is original, nervous and deep
  • the game builds bridges with digital elements
  • the format legacy that’s life

I’ll talk to you in detail about Bomb Busters in a full review soon, but I couldn’t resist telling you a few words about it. Thanks to missmeeplebg for the photos, I was so caught up playing that I even forgot to take some! I think she’s quite obsessed with Bomb Busters too, go check out her content!

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