This is a series of posts where I play 100 boardgames.
Game: Bomb Busters
Designer: Hisashi Hayashi
Year: 2024
Country: Japani
Publisher: Lautapelit.fi
At its core, Bomb Busters is a really simple game. It’s about a team trying to defuse a bomb by cutting wires. Each player has a selection of numbered wire connections visible only to them, ordered from lowest to highest and drawn from a common pool. Thus, you know the number space and you know how many of each number there are (4). Then, your task is to guess which other player’s specific connection might be a match for one of yours by saying, for example, “The third one from the left is a four.” If you’re right, a connection has been safely eliminated. If you’re wrong, you’re one step closer to losing.
The basic mechanism is fun, simple and easy to grasp. The game really shines in the way its tutorial missions are structured, so that you learn new mechanics incrementally as you play. It’s very easy to pick up and easy to continue.
There’s a surprisingly substantial campaign of missions which arrive in sealed boxes legacy game -style, which shows great commitment to replayability. One of the best examples I’ve seen of a design which takes a simple premise and develops all possible variations out of it.