Flick 'em Up
Review

Flick 'em Up (2015) is a flicking dexterity game of western shoot-outs. You aim to shoot teams of cowboys by flicking bullets at them. It's fiddly in the best kind of way and is simple enough to understand quickly whilst also offering some cleverly deep layers.

You start by setting up the cowboys' houses, cacti and other items in different scenarios. To start with you can just go head to head down a street, but as you get more proficient and ambitious there are new concepts, weapons and items to introduce. How you set it up is actually up to you and some of the best games include invented rules from the players.

Each turn you get two actions per cowboy. Flick to shoot a bullet from each of your characters, aiming to knock over enemies so they lose a life. You can also flick to move your cowboys around. This can be to get away from an easy shot, or to enter a building for some safety and to pick up or drop off weapons, extra lives or cash.

As you take on more complex scenarios the goals change with missions like stealing gold, finding the barrels with poisoned water and protecting civilians. There are also some nice twists like duels where you take on another player in a flicking mini-game to see who can hit who first while slowly moving towards each other. Another nice bit of finessing the rules is special weapons like the Winchester, which grants you the use of an aiming tool.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Flick 'em Up 20 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 10 months ago.