Hello.

By some reason or another I like racing games. Some of my favourite early computer games were car games and in a way still are. At the time (mid 80's), the drivers-perspective car games were bad - the computers weren't fast enough to calculate polygons, so what they did was having a graphic representation of a road going "into" the TV-screeen, and stuff at the sides of the road were moved and gradually enlarged, creating a vision of travelling into the TV screen. When the road curved, there was a simple algorithm that made the "car" (that just sat still at the bottom of the screen) slide to the other side, depending on how fast you travelled, and how sharp the curve was. Shortly, the curve handling was just an artificial thing. That the car slid to the side wasn't a natural cause of the game's physics. It was a programmed effect that ran parallell with the graphics showing a bend in the road. It felt… bland.

I rarely liked those games. I preferred the games where you saw the car from above. From that perspective, it felt more natural. The car really turned when you turned, and the faster you went, the longer the turning radius. Not realistic, but the car simply obeyed the game's simple physics. There was no extra-programmed force pulling you out of the curves.

Games evolved and I got Ridge Racer for the Playstation. Here, you really travelled in a 3D world. No unnatural forces pulling cars sideways… or so I thought. Well, I played the game, but I laughed like hell. The skidding algorithm was a joke. Let go of the accel button, press it again, and the car went into "skid mode", where the car automatically followed the road's curve, no matter how you turned the car. It was like following an invisible magnetic rail. It looked supercool when not abusing it, but if you put the car into skid mode approaching a right bend, and turned the car left, you'd end up going backwards when the bend was over. It was ridiculous.

I later discovered an unknown car game called "Rally Cross" for the same Playstation. There, you drove weird cars over bumpy roads, and the cars could tip and very often did. It wasn't realistic, the gravitation was much too light, the cars were high and werid, but I was thrilled, because there was no (or few) fake algorithms anywhere. It was just a calculation of different colliding 3D object having their individual speed, direction, mass and rotation vectors. It wasn't realistic, but it was mathematically completely correct. It was so calculation heavy the Playstation could barely take it. Despite that fact, it's still my favourite racing game. I have seen no other racing game trying to have the same approach. Probably because Rally Cross sold badly. I think I'm the game's only fan.

Now, what does all this have to to with Bolide? Well, Bolide reminds me a bit of the same thing. Let me explain and compare to Formula Dé.

Like so many others here on BGG, I bought and appreciated Formula Dé. I still think it's a good game, I do, but I had issues. I'm a house ruler, and always want to invent stuff that I find improve the game, and there was a lot of stuff I wanted to do with Formula Dé, but never mind. What really blotched that game for me was the curve handling, especially in complicated curves. In Formula Dé, you drive cars on a 3-laned track rolling dice and moving the car that number of spaces, the higher the gear you have, the bigger the die you roll. Curves are marked with a red border and the curve handling in Formula Dé is that you have to stop (meaning stop in between two die rolls) inside the border, or your car is damaged (or destroyed). Simply speaking, if you stand before a curve that is 10 spaces long, and you roll 18 on the die, you're in trouble. If you roll 8 on your die, you're safe - you've moved slowly enough. So, you have to plan what gear you're in when approaching a bend.

Now, the bends in Formula Dé naturally have different lanes too, and some are longer than others. What got me off is the result of this: The faster you go, the more you will want to take the longest path through the bend. In simple curves, this is one thing, but in the S-curves in some of the Formula Dé tracks, this is ridiculous, as the longest way through an S-curve isn't to diagonally cut it (which is the natural way to go when going too fast) but to really turn back and forth like a drunkard.

I tried to invent some rules to rectify this, something that, if you took a good "line" through the bend, you'd get a larger margin of where you could stop, but… no. It wouldn't work.

Shortly, Formula Dé felt like those old driver's perspective 8-bit computer games, and a bit like the magnetic rail in Ridge Racer – very artificial curve handling. People might argue, why care for dynamics? It's still a fun game. And I guess it is. For most. But for me, the lack of logic destroyed large parts of the game.

Years later, I discovered Bolide. Here, on the Geek, really. By a chance. I read about it, adored it, bought it, continued to adore it. Sure, I houseruled the hell out of the original rules, byt hey… that's what I do. And what house rules I use for special occasions isn't the point. The point is the dynamics. And what you get in the box, as the dynamics isn't really anything new.

Components
Bolide comes with an 8 piece cardboard puzzle for a race track, double-sided so you get two tracks. You get 8 plastic cars in different colours, a sand timer (30 sec), manual, a d12.
And oh, the box is wonderful. Probably the best looking game box in my collecion. Stark black, with a bit of a race track on it, and the text "Bolide". Nice, clean. Full points for that.

Brief game overview
In Bolide, you don't use the dice for the car to move. Instead, you have a restriction of how much your car can accelerate/decelerate/turn each time it moves.

The race track is covered by a square grid of lines, and the cars move from point to point, always standing on where the lines cross. When you start, you may move the car a maximum of 2 spaces, orthogonally or diagonally. Next turn, you have to move exactly the same speed and vector as last turn, only you get to change it a maximum of 2 spaces each turn. So, if you moved 5 spaces "west" in turn 1, you can accelerate up to 7 spaces "west" in turn 2, or decelerate down to 3 spaces. Or go 5 spaces "west" and 2 spaces "south". What you can't do is stop completely - if you have a speed of 7 spaces, with maximum deceleration, you'll still go 5 spaces. The next turn 3 spaces, and the turn after that 1 space.

Yes, those who recognize this will say that it plays precisely as the draw-lines-on-squaregridded-paper. That old game, usually played during lunch breaks in school, is even represented here on BGG: Racetrack. So the idea isn't new. But it's implemented well.

In Bolide, to keep track of what speed/vector your car has, you have a little plastic pawn (I call them 'inertia pawns') that is placed on the board where you will travel if you choose to maintain your current speed/vector. Shortly, if you went 5 spaces "east" and 2 spaces "north" during your last turn, your inertia pawn will be placed 5 spaces east and 2 spaces north of your car. Simple.

And that's how the game goes. In turn, people move their cars, and their inertia pawns accordingly. This results in a game where you simply move the car through the curves and bends just as a typical race car would. Decelerate in time, or you'll end up in the grass. Simple, but good dynamic, and it works. It really feels like you're racing a car.

Of course, there are more rules than that. Like in Formula Dé you roll the die at the start to see if the start was good or bad, you roll the die when cars are on collision course, and there is also rules for sharp brakings, if you happen to make a mistake. You can equip different tyre types that have a different number of sharp brakings available, and different maximum speed. You can roll the die if you want an extra boost, and it might provide the boost or it might damage your car. The manual has tables where you read the result of your die roll. But to be honest, I feel that "use these if you like". They're just decorations. The idea of this game is the base dynamics.

Verdict
Bolide is an extremely fine game. I feel I won't ever have to buy another racing game, all I want for a race game is more tracks to Bolide. The game is just based on an old public domain idea of a race game, but I find that matters little. Instead of playing with pen and paper, I get a big board and cars. And a timer. And most of all, even though I use few of the rules in the rulebook except for the base rules , it was inspiring, felt very variable, and gameplay was enticing and fun. Shortly, Bolide and the first extra tracks were some of the best spent gaming money this year.

That said, it does feel strange to praise a game when I realise that I'm not even using the rules the designer invented, just the components and the basic idea. But as I said, I don't feel that the detailed rules for games like this necessarily has to be an unseparable part of that game. For board games, if there is a rule you don't like, take it away. Keep what you like.

So I did. I bought Bolide, took away what I didn't like, kept what I did like, and what was left was an amazing race car game that I will be playing many, many times from here on.

(What rules I play with? A different point distribution system for tyre types/sharp brakes/curves and tyre wear. Also, simultaneous movement to speed the game up. Details can be read here.)