Heat: Pedal to the Metal: With Two, There's No Race. The Bots Don't Help.

Heat is a racing game that knows exactly how racing should feel. The problem: at our table, there usually aren’t enough drivers to feel it.

Full disclosure

Let’s be upfront: we haven’t played Heat nearly as much as the other games we review. We played it with two, my daughter and me, also with the Legends bots, and somehow it rarely makes it back to the table. So this is an honest first-impressions review, not a verdict after dozens of races. Take it for what it is.

What is Heat: Pedal to the Metal?

Heat is a car racing game set in the golden age of motorsport. It’s designed by Asger Harding Granerud and Daniel Skjold Pedersen, published by Days of Wonder, and came out in 2022. The retro artwork is by Vincent Dutrait.

The publisher lists 1 to 6 players and about 60 minutes. The base box comes with four tracks: USA, Great Britain, France and Italy.

How it plays

Each turn, you choose a gear, play that many cards from your hand and move your car. Push too hard, take a corner too fast or boost at the wrong moment, and you collect Heat cards that clog up your hand. It’s a constant balance between speed and keeping your engine alive.

• Everyone picks at once. All players choose their cards at the same time, so there’s little waiting around.
• Heat is the price of speed. Every risky move costs you Heat, and Heat cards are dead weight in your hand. For us, this push-and-pull is the core of the game.
• Short or long races. A standard race is two laps; for a first game, you can play just one.
• Modules for later. The box includes optional modules: a Championship mode that runs a whole season in one evening, Garage upgrades for your car, weather and road conditions, and the Legends bots. Advanced rules are a separate download. Apart from the Legends, we haven’t tried the modules.

Clever, and the theme is spot-on

The mechanics are clever. Shifting gears, managing your Heat cards and timing your boosts makes for great strategy, and everything fits the racing theme perfectly. Going into a corner too fast doesn’t just feel wrong. It costs you, right there in your hand of cards.

And the retro artwork? Fantastic. It looks like a vintage racing poster come to life.

The catch: two cars don’t make a race

Here’s the problem. With two players, the race lacks real tension. The strategy is there, but racing excitement needs a crowded track: cars fighting for the same line, slipstreaming, blocking each other in the corners. With two cars, it feels more like two people doing time trials on the same track.

The game does come with bots, called Legends, that are meant to fill the grid at low player counts. We tried them. It didn’t help much: the Legends are just cars that get in your way or give you slipstream, but they don’t race with any tactics of their own. They’re traffic, not rivals.

What we haven’t done yet: raced with a full grid of humans. That’s where the excitement should be, and it’s the obvious next test. Until then, our verdict on a crowded track is a question mark.

Heat or Flamme Rouge?

The comparison you hear most often is Flamme Rouge, a cycling game by the same two designers. We haven’t played it, so this is what we hear about it in the community.

On difficulty, Heat is often placed above Ticket to Ride, The Quest for El Dorado, The Quacks of Quedlinburg and Cascadia, and roughly level with Clank!. So it’s not the lightest step into the hobby.

There are also expansions: Heavy Rain, Tunnel Vision, Rocky Roads and Heat Legends, which adds automated drivers. We haven’t tried any of them, and which to get first is a matter of debate in the community.

Heat with kids, and the e-car generation

My daughter found Heat cool. But we noticed something interesting: the gear-shifting system is pretty abstract if you don’t know how shifting gears in a car actually works and what it does. Which raises a fun question: how will this play with the next generation of e-car drivers, who may never touch a gear stick?

The publisher puts the age at 10+; some listings say 8+.

What to know before a family race: opinions on the learning curve differ. Some find it too involved for newcomers, with its turn phases and Heat management. Others describe beginner play with the base rules as simple, with the modules only adding complexity later. A one-lap first race and no modules sounds like the gentlest start. We haven’t tested that with a kid, so treat it as a lead.

One practical note: the track boards are big and take up a lot of table space. Clear the dinner plates first.

Who is Heat for?

Heat is a great entry into the hobby for car and racing fans. If someone in your family lights up at the sight of a racetrack, this could be the game that gets them hooked. That goes for a racing-mad kid, a partner who never misses a Grand Prix, or the roommate with the model cars on the shelf.

For everyone else, there are better gateway games. The theme simply doesn’t grab most people we know, and that’s a big part of why it stays on our shelf.

What we hear in the community

Many players love the quick core loop with simultaneous card selection, which keeps waiting time low, and the tension of the Heat mechanic: pushing your speed versus clogging your deck. You often hear that the included modules like Garage, Weather and Championship add depth, and that the base game alone can get repetitive. Some find the Legends bots make solo and small groups work well. But we’re not alone in being underwhelmed by them: many find the bots only alright compared to human players, and their difficulty varies from track to track.

Common criticisms: the big table footprint, the price for a mostly card-based game, and luck from card draws, especially in the final turns.

Our verdict

Heat is clever, beautiful and thematically perfect. But at two players, the race didn’t grip us, and the theme doesn’t pull in most people at our table.

Got a family of racing fans and a full grid? Go for it. Mostly playing with two, or looking for a gateway game for people who don’t care about cars? Look elsewhere. And don’t count on the Legends to save a two-player race.