A nerve-testing bomb round — pick the safest fuse before the boom.
Four bombs sit in a row, each with a lit fuse burning down at a different rate. Your job each round is to click the bomb whose fuse has the most time left — the slowest one to burn — before any of them reaches the end and explodes.
Click or tap the bomb you judge to have the longest remaining fuse. There are several rounds, so you'll make the call repeatedly.
It runs over 4 rounds, and you score for every correct pick — choosing the safest bomb before anything blows. Most correct picks across the rounds wins.
When you play Short Fuse between rounds or in the Arcade, the computer players compete at the difficulty set for your match — from Rookie up to Ace. Easier bots make loose, mistimed plays you can beat with basic execution, while the hardest bots play tight and consistent, so you'll need clean judgement to out-score them. In a live game it's the humans who usually decide the round, so a calm, practiced run is your edge.
Short Fuse is one of the quick minigames that fires between rounds of a RentRivals match — the whole table plays the same game at once, and the winner banks a $20 in-game bonus that can fund the next big purchase. You can also practice Short Fuse any time, solo against three CPUs, in the Minigame Arcade from the main menu — no board, no room, no stakes.
Look at the unburnt portion of each fuse — the bomb with the most fuse still to go is the safe pick, regardless of how fast it seems to be burning.
Four. You get several chances to score, so a couple of confident, quick picks will put you ahead of anyone who dithers.
Enjoyed Short Fuse? Here are three more RentRivals minigames to check out: