I have spent the last few evenings playtesting a new upcoming game that sees robots fighting in an arena, it has been great fun playing this game and it is almost at a stage where it is ready to go through the final design stage.
This is the stage where all my mediocre designs become more pleasing to the eye!
This stage is not quick but we are hoping to release the game before the end of the year, so watch out for any updates.
All the cards and tokens etc have been done for the basic game and it has gone through lots of playtests and it works great, you get to play the game controlling a robot in an arena fighting other players robots, again using simple rules to produce a fun simple game that you can pick up easily.
We have added a solo set of rules which use a simple robot program to run enemy robots which you have to destroy, this version of the game needs a little more playtesting to make sure that it all works as it should, but so far we have seen no problems so this shouldn’t take long to finish.
But what I have been playtesting over the last few evenings is something a little different, this add-on for the main game sees a small team of robots playing a sports game, imagine a sci-fi version of a cross between an American football game with big chunky robots fighting over a ball and a basketball style game where robots are throwing the ball into holes in the ground to score goals…
This version still needs a few tweaks and adjustments in the game play but it is close, even as it is it plays well and you can get a good fun game, but it does need refining a little.
I am not going to say too about the game play or what is in the game, but here are a few photos of the action on the board to just give you an idea of what it may look like in the final game.
The main game would be played on a bigger board, so far I have printed out three of the boards you can see in the photos and it gives a good arena for the robots to fight in.
I have still to do a token for the ball so I have been using a ball made from Blu-tac, not great but it works for now.
Well that was just a small look at the game but if you want to know more make sure you watch out for updates about the game over the next few months.
Hi Mac!
Have you ever played Robo-Rally, the robot racing (and fighting … sort of) game? It uses cards with movement options on them, and each turn a robot gets a hand of 8 cards and keeps 4 or 5, playing them in a preset order (top card draw style).
The best thing about RR was the board’s, which had sets of conveyor belts on them. The belts activated after robot movement but before they fired (if I remember it correctly), moving the robots … I can remember one game where my robot was pushed by another, faster robot onto a fast conveyor which promptly chucked my robot into a bottomless pit!
Oops … game over!
Hi Vic,
I have Robo Rally and have played it many times it is a lot of fun.
Yeah the boards were great, you could sit playing and work out your moves perfectly with the cards you had, and some idiot would push you onto a conveyor belt and that was it all your perfect planning gone and your robot ends up the other side of the board completely in the wrong place or as you say down a hole!!
My game uses cards to program the robots movement but only one at a time, not 5 like in RR, to be honest I did start writing with something similar to RR in mind but I found it far too complicated and it didn’t fit in with my usual simple rules.
You still have to plan your moves in this game, there is also other factors involved with movement, there is a cost and you can also use program cards to add to or change movement, which gives a nice tactical feel to playing…
The main game is very tactical and you have to really use your resources and your cards carefully and pick the right time to do things or it can go really wrong very quickly.