Heat: Heavy Rain Review - A Perfect Addition

Making it across the finish line in a high-speed, high-stakes race is hard enough, but add in winding chicanes and flooding, and you're in for the ride of your life! That's the challenge set to would-be racers in Heat: Heavy Rain, the first official expansion to the fabulous racing game Heat: Pedal to the Metal. Asmodee USA sent us a review copy to check out, so let's buckle up and track how it expands the core racing game with our review!

What Is Heat: Heavy Rain?

Heat: Heavy Rain is the first official expansion to Heat: Pedal To The Medal, which I've never covered here on TechRaptor, and is worth speaking about for just a moment (because I think it's such a strong game).

In Heat, players take on the role of a Formula 1 driver racing around a track against your opponents. You'll build a small deck of cards with special abilities and speed, move your car around the track, and try to avoid too much heat on your engine, which could cause you to spin out.

The main challenge of the game comes from navigating tricky turns, where you'll need to slow down or risk being stalled out. With Heat: Heavy Rain, that challenge is amped up even further with the inclusion of chicanes (multiple tight turns in a row) and flooding! It also contains lots of other small upgrades to the core game.

Here's the full component list:

• 1 giant double-sided board (2 tracks)
• 15 Heat cards & 5 Stress cards
• 15 Upgrade cards
• 7 Sponsorship cards
• 4 Event cards
• 1 Scorepad
• 1 Rules booklet
• 2 Track cards
• 1 race car and matching gear pawn
• 1 player mat
• 12 Basic card

How Does Heat: Heavy Rain Change The Game?

Heat: Heavy Rain changes the core gameplay of Heat in a fun, but what I would consider non-intrusive, way. For starters, the game introduces two new double-sided racetrack boards - Japan and Mexico. I'll speak in a moment to how each board updates the game. The other fun update here is the addition of a seventh car - the orange race car.

The core game box comes with six cars, but tantalizingly contains space for two more cars! With the release of Heavy Rain it's clear we've got one more expansion to come which will give us that final eighth car.

This expansion also comes with new additions to the upgrade deck, new sponsorship cards (used in a mini-campaign mode), and rules for making Legend drivers (basically automated drivers you can race against by flipping cards) more aggressive.

How The New Heat: Heavy Rain Tracks Play

Now let's dive into the two new tracks: Japan and Mexico. The Mexico track sports a sun-drenched look and really leans into the nastiness of a tough chicane. After zooming off on a quick runaway stretch, racers will have to quickly pivot to a series of turns that won't have them burning out, but will tempt them with the ability to drive fairly fast toward them.

But then, right before the starting line, there's an absolutely brutal double 2 chicane - to speak broadly about what that means, it means you'll have to - right as you want to gun it across the finish line - slow your car down to a crawl or risk seriously speeding out. It'll take a lot of careful forethought and planning to perfectly navigate this course.

Next up is the Japan track, a bright and vibrant board with some tight turns and a fun straightaway, but what makes it really special are the flooded portions of the track. This is where the "Heavy Rain" of the title comes in. With these flooded patches of track, you can go as fast as you'd like, but it's easier than ever to lose control.

With a penalty to downshifting your gear, you'll find yourself needing to plan even earlier than usual as you approach the tight turns laid out in front of you.

What Are Our Final Thoughts On Heat: Heavy Rain?

Heat: Heavy Rain is exactly what I want from a good expansion. It gives me new ways to play the game with fun new boards, it opens up the game to an additional player, and anything it changes doesn't feel like a complete overhaul. Look at the two core mechanics included on these maps: chicanes and flooded roads.

Both are immediately easy to comprehend. The chicane is just "two turns instead of one," and the flooded road portions are just "it is harder to downshift."

Simple, elegant, they change the decision making in the game while keeping the logical flow of the experience intact! And all the other additions just give you more options: more upgrade cards, more events, etc.

In other words, Heat: Heavy Rain is absolutely the blueprint for a fantastic expansion, and I can't recommend it highly enough for fans of the original Heat.