Fuse

TL;DR

What: A manic ten minutes of collaborative bomb defusing

Players: 2-5

Time: 10 mins. Exactly.

People: Bit complex for little kids, but otherwise pretty universal

Available: Get it here

UK⁠

or here

US⁠

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The Gist

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Why we recommend it

Waiting for your turn is rubbish, isn’t it?

“Ummmm … hmmmm… let me think. What should I do?”

Just hurry up and take your turn! I’ve got shit to do.

I also feel under a lot of pressure to get my go over with quickly. But it’s not fair for someone to take forever and it can make people lose interest. You need to value everyone’s time. Well, the good thing in Fuse is that you don’t have a lot of it to value.

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This is a “real-time” game. There is a 10 minute timer counting down and once it hits 00:00 it’s all over, so you need to move quickly. Move too quickly though, and you might end up wasting more time. Let me explain.

In Fuse a group of you are working together to disarm bombs. Lots of bombs. Using lots of nice coloured dice. Most are quite simple to disarm, match some colours and numbers or do some simple sums. Others involve more complicated maths (not that complicated) and stacking the dice without knocking them over.

It’s as quick as you can grab a handful of dice (one for each player) and roll them. You can each only take one dice each and it has to fit into one of the two bombs you are trying to disarm. Any remainders mean you all lose dice.

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You might be able to take almost any of the dice, but someone else may only be able to take the red five. If you grab it first and they can’t take any, you are all going to lose out.

That clock is ticking down though, so you don’t have all day to figure out the perfect optimal dice for everyone. It often leads to you all shouting in a panic “I can take literally any of them” or “I’m so sorry but I desperately need that blue one” and hoping you don’t all talk over each other too much or criminally misread your own bomb.

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The first few games you play will almost certainly result in failure. An enjoyable explosion of failure. Every time you play you’ll get slightly closer to getting all your bombs disarmed and that sweet sense of victory. Once you’ve done it the once though, it’s time to up the ante. Increase the bombs, increase the difficulty. Maybe start adding in house rules like having to play silently for a few seconds every other minute.

Fuse also gets bonus points for coming in a nice small box and working really well with just two players as well as four and five. We really recommend this exciting, panicky game of fun and it will literally only take you 10 minutes to play … or else.

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