As I left the grocery store, a mousey woman stopped me. Her three children wriggled around and climbed her legs like kittens. She ignored their antics as she fixed her gaze on me.
“What’s new with the game?” she asked. “You know. The one with the robots? Dropping?”
“Ah,” I said. “I see what’s happening here. You’re a rhetorical construct inserted into this blog post in order to add some narrative spice.”
She shrugged. The kids giggled and called each other names.
“Maybe. Maybe not. But that doesn’t answer the question. What’s up with Robot Drop?”
Seeing that she was committed to the bit, I shifted the groceries I was holding to the other hand and stared thoughtfully into space.
“I did some more playtesting,” I said. “Found a couple things in the latest session — nothing Earth-shattering, but they’re worth noting — I mean, since you asked.”
I started talking in bullet points:
- While the game doesn’t allow for friendly fire (attacks pass through your own bots to hit your opponent’s), this lets you set up “chains” of robots shooting through each other at a single target, which feels weird. Also, the ability to “shove” an enemy robot so that its shot hits its own ally would be pretty fun. So I’m considering reconsidering friendly fire.
- It’s sort of implied in the rules, but I made it explicit that attacks don’t “blow through” by default. That is, if I do 5 damage to a bot with 1 Health, the “excess” 4 damage is just wasted.
- Homes block movement and line of sight on the board.
- The game’s still feeling a little slow. I might try combining the “move” and “rotate” actions, which should speed things up considerably.
The woman nodded, satisfied. She gestured at my grocery bag.
“You should get going. Your ice cream is starting to melt.”
Oops. She was right. Rhetorical rocky road was dripping onto my rhetorical jeans.
It was time to wrap this up and head home.
