How has it come to this? You’ve lost your house. Your family. The bank has issued a repo order on your car. Credit cards? Forget about it. You’re the first person in your state to hold a credit score below 300. Thank goodness you still have a few bucks in your pocket. The bounce is coming, you can feel it. Sure, every casino ejects you on sight, but there’s one last hope for salvation:

Off-brand mascot racing.

This is Hot Streak, a game with a premise so weird and wild that I’d be drawn into its orbit even if it hadn’t been designed by Jon Perry. But like Time Barons, Scape Goat, Air, Land, & Sea, Spots, and a good number of titles in the faux-retro collection UFO 50, it was indeed designed by Jon Perry — and I can safely say it’s the only game in existence where a man in a hot dog suit might trample a foam angler fish to death by running backwards on a racetrack.

Oh nooooo.

Meet our heroes. We aren’t even sure who they are. That’s the nature of mascots. It isn’t the man in the suit who matters. It’s what they represent. Like Batman.

What these particular heroes represent is the abyss you discover when you think you’ve hit rock bottom. With only a few soggy dollars left in your pocket, you’re wagering everything on the outcome of three foot races between besuited teenagers who can’t quite see through their costumes’ eye-holes.

Those eye-holes will haunt you. It would have been easy for Hot Streak’s sculptor to just provide the mascots as we imagine them — Mum the queen, Dangle the angler fish, Hurley the hot dog, Gobbler the bear. But no. Oh no. Their eyes. Their eyes. In Mum’s case, the sclera of the suit’s inhabitant gleams through her mouth like rotten teeth. Dangle’s occupant peers out of the fish’s mouth like its most recent victim. Perry has always excelled at crafting games that are more than they appear. Hot Streak is a comedy game about laughing yourself silly, but it’s also a game about what it feels like to go on tilt.

Is that too dark? If anything, it’s that darkness that gives Hot Streak its competitive edge. Within seconds of setting up for our first session, I found myself thinking about John D. Clair’s Ready Set Bet, another game about the thrill of placing your ticket at the last possible second. Hot Streak is the slower of the two, with none of Ready Set Bet’s real-time freneticism. But it’s also more controlled in addition to being significantly sillier. After all, you aren’t only placing bets — you’re actively doping the competition.

Doping the mascots.

When the game opens, everyone is given a comprehensive look at each racer’s history. There’s one default card for each mascot, a basic option that will see them recovering from any turnaround or knockdown and then waddling two spaces forward, but the remainder of the deck is also laid bare. This is the degenerate gambler’s inside track, the knowledge that Dangle tends to swerve left on the stretch, that Mum’s little legs are powerhouses, that Hurley always eats concrete.

As those cards are shuffled into the deck that will govern the race, however, everyone is allowed a single tweak. From your own hand of cards, you goose the odds. Perhaps Mum has a chance of getting turned around this race. Now those legs will be working against her as she bolts the wrong way. Maybe Hurley has an extra recovery card in there, putting some extra lift in his step. Maybe Gobbler’s suit will be extra top-heavy today, sending him staggering backward at a crucial moment.

Maybe. You can’t be certain. When the count comes in, three cards are spent face-down from the deck. The rest are then used to waddle, stagger, and otherwise galumph along the track. If the deck runs out before our mascots have finished, the whole thing is shuffled again and three different cards will be discarded. You’re giving the odds a little pinch on the hindquarters, nothing more. If everything works out as planned, your chosen runner will bring home the turkey. More often, they’ll fall prey to your fellow degenerates’ own meddling. That or somebody will also bet on your favored mascot.

Remember, Hot Streak is a betting game. There’s the standard stuff, calling which racer will come in first, second, or third place, plus the ability to choose between a safe bet that will pay out in most circumstances or a riskier option that pays out big for first place but sharply diminishes in returns for anything else. Like the wagers in Ready Set Bet, payouts decrease as more are placed, encouraging players to spread around their bets in hopes of winning big. Even if you think Hurley is going to bring home the cup today, being the third person to wager on him means you’d only win a few dollars. Why not take a chance on Dangle? You never know. Maybe the fish won’t biff it this time.

At the same time, every race — a full session consists of three, each with its own opportunity to tweak the odds again — also has a side bet going. Drawn at random from a dedicated deck, these are the wagers for the real sickos. Ever wanted to lay odds on the possibility of a mascot getting knocked out cold? Here’s your chance.

Place your bets!

When it gets going, Hot Streak has a sweaty, delirious feel. This does require some investment on players’ part — like an observer at a horse race, its appeal can be held at arm’s length or permitted to crash over you. Playing with my kiddos, the game had us howling with laughter. “The hot dog smashed him,” my five-year-old screamed with delight as Hurley stampeded a prostrate Dangle for the second time in a single race, removing the queen to last place. In that moment, we had become plebs in the Colosseum, hooting as the lion tackled some poor venator to the sand. Go lions.

In some instances, that investment doesn’t come easily. More than once, I’ve witnessed stretches that were simply too ordinary. Rather than filling the deck with booby traps, it’s possible that everybody will slip useful cards onto their favored runners, stick to safe bets, and then yawn through the proceedings. These races might produce a tumble or two, but largely see everybody staying in their lane.

Playing this way somewhat misses the mark that Perry seems to be aiming for with Hot Streak. As a game, this one is at its best when it’s generating those comedic beats — mascots disqualifying themselves by running backward off the track, or someone falling to the ground and pathetically crawling forward one inch at a time. But those beats sometimes find themselves at odds with players’ desire to, y’know, take home as much cash as possible. Not all the time. But often enough that it’s worthwhile approaching Hot Streak as a dark-comedy party game first and a betting game second.

Because when it hits, it hits like a foam pointer-finger that still somehow clotheslines the mascot head over cleats. It’s the little details that do it. The way the track rolls out of the box is nice, but watching it gradually fold up behind your racers as the deck is shuffled, threatening any trailing racers with disqualification and guaranteeing a conclusion even if nobody ever crosses the finish line — that’s where Perry’s design chops become evident. Watching a downed bear muster all his strength to crawl the wrong direction. Hearing the table’s cheers fall silent as Mum, who nobody has bet on, blitzes into first place. Yeah. That’s the sweet spot.

I can honestly say I’ve never seen a production quite like it.

Occasional dud aside, Hot Streak is another success from Jon Perry. It’s simple enough that my five-year-old got the gist within minutes, consistently funny in its physical comedy and unexpected turns of fortune, and blackly comedic for those of us who regard industrial gambling as a blight on humankind. I’m in love with my freaky mascots. May Hurley continue to fall on his face every time I’ve wagered my final nickel on his success.

A complimentary copy of Hot Streak was provided by the publisher.

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