Getaway Driver revs up a fast and furious car chase board game

Car chases are uniquely underserved as a theme on the tabletop, but a new board game wants to finally put the pedal to the metal.

Getaway Driver is a two-player pursuit between a wheelperson simply called – in Drive-like fashion – ‘The Driver’ and the police hot on their tail.

Each side of the chase plays in a different way, with the Driver able to pull off stunts – including handbrake turns, jumps and two-wheeled tricks – and collect stashes on their race through the city, while the police attempt to cut them off and stop them escaping by secretly constructing the network of roads using a set of hidden tiles and carefully positioning their vehicles, roadblocks and barricades, as well as an eye-in-the-sky helicopter.

If the final city tile is placed, the Driver makes it out and wins. The police catch them by increasing their pursuit meter to its final space, achieving through blocking off routes and cornering the fleeing criminal.

Behind the game is Jeff Beck, co-designer of wordy deckbuilder Hardback, who has reunited with illustrator Ryan Goldsberry for a striking art style that riffs on classic chase movies like Bullitt, The Italian Job and The Fast and the Furious. (Yes, there is a Mini Cooper.)

With the city built as you play, it cleverly takes into account any obstacles you might have on the table, with the Driver able to use drinking-glass lakes and table-edge ravines to their advantage as they whizz around.

The turn-by-turn construction of the city also means it’s a unique layout each time, and is said to be playable out of the box in just a couple of minutes, with a chase taking around half an hour to 45 minutes.

Getaway Driver can be grabbed for as little as $3 on Kickstarter, which will get you a print-and-play version of the game. The boxed version is $24.

The campaign’s already made over £50,000 on a modest £7,000 target, ahead of a release next March.