Need a quick, cheap two-player game for tonight? Board Game Arena has just added Fugitive, Tim Fowers' tense little chase, and you can play it in your browser for free. It went live on the site on 6 July 2026, and at around ten minutes a game it is the sort of thing you can fire off five times in a row without noticing the evening go.
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Find events near youThe setup is beautifully simple. One player is the Fugitive, sprinting to escape town before the net closes. The other is the Marshal, hunting them down. The Fugitive lays hideout cards face down in a rising sequence, sometimes making big leaps up the numbers to throw the trail off. The Marshal, working only from a shrinking pool of possibilities, has to guess which cards are on the table. Flip every hideout face up and the Fugitive is caught. It is pure bluff and deduction, two players reading each other across a tiny handful of cards, and it swings on nerve as much as maths.
Fugitive comes from Tim Fowers, the designer behind the word-building deckbuilder Paperback and the co-op heist game Burgle Bros, so a taut two-hander built around hidden information is very much his wheelhouse. The Board Game Arena version was adapted by community developer BanBan, with the game's original art by Ryan Goldsberry.
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See how it worksIf you have a games partner, a lunch break or a long-distance friend you keep meaning to play with, this is an easy one to learn cold and teach in a minute. Give it a few rounds online, and if it clicks, it is a cheap box to keep in a coat pocket. Fancy making a proper night of your two-player games? Round up a group on Backseat Gamer and find people to play with near you.
Sources: Board Game Arena | Fowers Games | Board Game Arena news
