There’s a certain kind of action movie that tends to end with the hero desperately trying to defuse the bomb. For some reason these things always seem to have LED display times and colour-coded wires, and can only be defused in the nick of time.

FUSE is a card and dice game that evokes this exact same sort of thing. It’s a co-operative game; you work together with your friends to defuse bombs. Though by bombs we actually mean puzzle cards and by defuse we mean put the right dice on the right card. 

The way it works is like this. You draw cards from a special deck, and lay a number of them on the table. On each card there is a puzzle, and your team has to solve a set number of these puzzles in order to win. Each round you draw a set number from the bag and roll them. These dice work as components that let you solve the puzzles. Players decide among themselves which dice they wish to take, but they had better hurry, as the clock is ticking. Each game of FUSE only lasts ten minutes, go over that time limit and you’ve lost; the ‘bomb’ goes off.

You require a combination of coloured dice and the numbered face to resolve each card. Once you’ve completed the card, it’s on to the next one. You only have split seconds to decide which card to grab next, time is always pressing. Oh, did I mention the game has a ticking bomb app? It totally does and it frightens the heck out of most gamers.

The difficulty level of the game is very easy to adjust. Each card has a difficulty rating and you can always put fewer cards in the stack to begin with. The dice are numbered in the style of an 80’s LED console, which is also nice. Another neat feature is, though this is a co-operative game, there’s no time to bicker- work together or get exploded. 

As short and sweet games go, FUSE looks set to become a regular favourite of those who like short games and action movies.

FUSE / DESIGNER: KANE KLENKO, MARC MEJIA / ARTIST: CHRIS OSTROWSKI / PUBLISHER: RENEGADE GAMES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW