Not as hot as I hoped

Ever since 🏎️ HEAT: Pedal to the Metal got released, it has been on the BGG hotness list, literally never leaving it. It has also risen to the 51st spot on BGG, which very few games do, so I've had my eye on the game for some time. This Christmas we finally got it. 🎁 My expectations were high - I researched the game a lot and really loved what I was seeing. Yet after playing it a few times we were left feeling hollow… 🫥

The game does a lot of things right. The art is insanely good. 🎨 No wonder, as Vincent Durtrait is listed as the artist. The game mechanics are also quite ingenious. It's all about managing your hand of cards and the heat of your engine. You can shift gears, which determines how many cards you can play - the values on the cards tell you how many spaces you move. In higher gear you can go faster, however there are also corners that have a speed limit where you need to slow down or risk spinning out.

Heat 🔥 is interesting too: for some things you pay by placing heat cards from your engine to your discard pile. These will be eventually shuffled into your deck, then go into your hand where they are useless. You will need to use cooldown effects to get rid of them. There are also Stress cards you cannot discard, which move your car a random amount when played, which introduces a bit of a luck element.

Reading about the game, learning the rules and also while playing, I really feel the ruleset is amazing. It plays smoothly (even though there are 9 phases in a turn), has both strategy and some luck element, and it's very thematic. So why don't we enjoy the game? 🤔 I think even though I say it has strategy and skill to it, to us the gameplay boils down into a flowchart that you all follow for optimal results (clearing corners asap, getting rid of stress cards when it's safe, going top speed on straight roads). You can't really deviate from that, so turns and laps become repetitive. 🙁

We only played 2p and 3p games, maybe that's why we are missing some of the fun factor. Maybe at 5p or 6p you get more excitement and laughs, but I imagine playtime also goes up by a lot.
I'm left heartbroken 💔, because I really wanted to love this game.