(Editor’s Note: This review, and the games streamed on YouTube.com/TheRatHoleDOTca, were based on the original, first edition of Burgle Bros 2. Unbeknownst to us, a second edition of the game was released at the end of 2025, addressing some of the details mentioned below. The Fower Games webstore says: “New compact edition! Includes 2 new finales and the popular “Casing the Joint” variant.”)
The casino heist. Not an overdone story, but an important enough story that it’s often differentiated from the regular heist story. Whether you are in a casino far far away, like Canto Bight in The Last Jedi, or Las Vegas in Ocean’s Eleven, it’s always exciting.
Given how consistent this genre is, I’m a bit surprised that there aren’t more games that draw on it. But even if there were, I suspect Burgle Bros 2 would be among the top games. While not perfect, it is a great game. When I discovered that this game had gotten sorted into a wrong pile, I was saddened that I hadn’t played it yet, but thrilled by the opportunity to do so. I immediately cracked into it and played a solo game. It’s at that point that I decided not to wait for a group to play this cooperative game, but rather that I’d play the full campaign myself. Oh, did I mention that it is a campaign game? It is.
The basics of gameplay are pretty simple. There are four main actions that a player can take, and they can take them up to four times on their turn. They can Move into an adjacent tile, revealing any tokens there and then revealing the tile itself. They can Peek at an adjacent tile, again, revealing any tokens, then the tile. There are tokens that only activate when peeked at. Use a While Here action if their current tile has one. Finally, once per turn, they may Prep a gear card. Gear cards are unique to each of the individual characters that players can choose to play.
Let me back up and talk about setup. Burgle Bros 2 takes place on two separate boards, representing two separate floors of the casino, and there are two ways to set it up. The official way uses the included legs to turn the box into a raised platform for the second floor play area. The unofficial, and my preferred method, is to place the two playmats side-by-side. Although I still use the box –without the legs– to raise the second floor a bit as a visual reminder that it is, indeed, the second floor. From there, you shuffle up the room tiles, separate them into two piles, and add in three floor-specific tiles to each pile. Then you add in eight wooden wall segments, and you have your playing space. To that, you’ll add a bouncer (more on him in a moment) and eight poker chip tokens to each floor. Reveal the first bouncer patrol card for each floor to set the bouncer’s starting point, and which tiles will get tokens. Then reveal a second card to determine the bouncer’s starting destination.
Now we have to look at the main antagonist of the game. The bouncer. After every player’s turn, the bouncer moves three spaces in a semi-predictable path through that floor’s board, and whenever the bouncer moves through a room with a player, that player gains two heat. If any player ever reaches six heat, the players collectively lose the game. The bouncer’s movement is determined by a small deck of cards (+/- 16 cards, depending on the difficulty) for each floor, or occasionally by other actions. The most common actions impacting the bouncer are making a commotion and Undercover tokens. When a commotion happens, the bouncer’s destination changes to that tile, and they move one extra space towards the new destination. When an undercover token is revealed by peeking at its tile, the bouncer automatically jumps to that tile, without changing its current destination. It’s important to note that an undercover token only activates when you reveal a room tile using the peek action, not when you move into the tile. While I was streaming my games, I did NOT notice that rule, and it definitely contributed to my losses.
There are two stages players need to complete in order to win the game. In the first stage is cracking the safe. Players need to reveal the Owner’s Office tile on the first floor, the Safe tile on the second floor, as well as all tiles in the same row and column as the Safe. To crack the Safe, a player must roll dice (found via the Mole tokens) until all numbers in the row and column have been covered. The second stage is the Finale. There are nine finale cards hidden in an envelope included with the game. Draw the top finale card from the envelope, and follow its additional setup rules. Then play out the scenario, ending when all players exit the casino. In the campaign mode, win or lose, you put the finale card for that game at the bottom of the deck in the envelope. In a one-off Random Finale game, shuffle the cards and draw one. When you win, you draw a piece of additional gear from a second envelope. In future games, this gear can be played instead of the base versions of its card.
Let me say this up front. Cooperative/Solo games are intended to be hard. One of my viewers said they believe co-ops should have only about a 25% win rate. Now, personally I think that small of a win percentage can be a major discouragement to casual gamers and even some advanced gamers. But co-op games should be hard. I came out of my 11 games with just under a 30% win rate, and that’s apparently playing on “accidental extra hard mode” from screwing up some rules.
While it’s supposed to be hard, there are a few circumstances that can make the game immediately unwinnable. In order to travel between floors, you need the matching Monorail and/or Escalator tiles revealed on both floors. A Drunk token on the second floor drops the player to the first floor, potentially stranding players with no way to get back to the second floor. A similar problem is the Saleswoman token, which prevents players on that tile from using the Move action until the token is removed by another player entering the space or that player leaving the tile via some other action. If that player’s character doesn’t have a piece of gear that allows them to jump to another tile, there may be no way to escape this trap. I mitigated this by using the Acrobat character that has such a gear card, the Grappling Hook. So I got out of a jam by jumping from the first floor to the second, only to immediately trigger a second-floor drunk, dropping me back to the first floor. That wasn’t fun. Thankfully, the Casing the Joint variant that Fowers Games released changes those token effects. This was created in reaction to complaints like these, and given out for free through direct sales and conventions.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game. It has its flaws, to be sure, but I enjoyed it enough to stream 11 games of it, and I’d play it again. Given how often I lost, I think that alone speaks volumes.
You can find Fowers Games online at Fowers.Games or on Facebook at facebook.com/fowersgames.
[David Chapman]
