And, we’re back! Here with another edition of Off the Shelf, let’s look today at

FUSE is a 2015 game designed by Kane Klenko and published by Renegade Games. It’s for 1-5 players, and is a real-time dice-rolling game where you are trying to defuse bombs in your spaceship within ten minutes. There are several games in the FUSE family now – along with the original, which got a new edition in 2019, there’s Flatline (2017 – this one is about saving patients injured in the original game’s attack) and FUSE Countdown (2023 – this one adds new stuff to the FUSE system, including multi-colored dice and roles).

At the start of the game, each player gets two cards (four in the solo game). You’ll then deal cards into a deck based on the number of players and desired level of difficulty, and shuffle them. Deal out five face-up cards, and then add six bomb cards to the deck.

There are no turns in this game. You start a ten minute timer (and Renegade has one on their app that will mock you throughout play) and start drawing dice – one per player in a 3-5 player game, four with two players, three in solo play. These are rolled, and each player will take one (two with two players, all in solo play). The chosen die (or dice) must be placed on a valid spot on a card. Most spots either have a specific number, a specific color, or both. Some have number or color of your choice, but these usually have to be identical (or not) to something else on the card. Sometimes you just need to place dice on the card, but other times you need to stack them into columns or a pyramid.

If you cannot place a die, you must roll it, then you must remove another placed die that matches the number or color of the rolled die. Once everyone is done, unused and discarded dice go back in the bag and you do it again.

When a card is completed, it is set aside into a score pile and you take a new one from the array in the center of the table. This card is immediately replaced with the top card of the deck. If it’s a bomb card, all players must discard a die that matches the number or color of the bomb card. The card then goes into the score pile and is replaced.

The game ends in two ways – either all cards are removed from the center of the table (deck is empty, all face-up cards are taken), or you run out of time and blow up. Either way, you score the points from your defused cards, two points per bomb card, ten points if you won, and one point per 10 seconds left on the clock. This is just for reference purposes to see how well you succeeded – you win if all bombs get defused.

I got my copy in 2016, winning it in some Twitter contest that I don’t remember. According to my logs, I’ve played it 53 times since then, most of which were solo. In fact, I’ve only played a couple of times with multiple people, and neither of them were terribly successful. There were too many times when players started bickering over dice they needed when someone else also needed them, and that wasted too much time. That led me to the conclusion that I much prefer it as a solo game, where I get to make my own decisions and am not beholden to others. Though I would like to try two players sometime.

The game is played in real-time, which is a turnoff for some people. It is highly stressful, as you only have 10 minutes to complete your bombs. And if you’re not rolling well, it can be pretty frustrating. But that’s part of what I really like about it – I think the tension works really well, and it ends up feeling like a really quickly played puzzle.

I happen to really enjoy real-time games. But I know there are a lot of people who don’t – the tension of not being able to pause and think can be highly stressful. For me, it works well. I love thinky games where I need to consider my options and make a reasonably educated move. But I also like chaos, and nothing says chaos like “you only have ten minutes before your ship explodes.”

The cards are pretty well laid out. The patterns are pretty easy to identify, and the dice fit in all the squares on the page. I do really like the 3-dimensional patterns as well as the 2-dimensional ones, because you have to be thinking about what has to come first. The bomb cards add an extra wrinkle to the game, and while it’s a sigh of relief when one comes up and you have nothing that matches, it’s pretty frustrating to discard something when they do.

Overall, the game is pretty high on the luck factor. You have to draw the right dice, roll well, and complete whatever challenges the game throws at you. You can try to strategize what bombs you want in front of you, maybe having a mix of easier and more complex patterns, but if only one or the other is coming out, you’ve got to deal with it. I personally love the 6-point bombs, as they always stack and are just a lot of fun to complete overall.

So, yeah, this is a favorite game of mine to play solo. I’m doing it as part of my 10×10 this year (ten games ten times each in a year), and have been enjoying it. I’ve lost more than I’ve won, but I always have a good time. I’ve currently got it at #5 for my Off the Shelf rankings.

That’s it for today! Thanks for reading!