Description from the publisher:
The next great technological revolution is here. Sentient robots for information, transportation, industry — all at our fingertips. Building them is now the easy part. Programming them has proven to be more complicated. A handful of companies have emerged claiming to pull it off, but only one will win out. Your mission is clear: Procure valuable bots and plug them into your network. They'll have an effect on your systems. Anticipate it correctly, program your bots effectively, and attract the right investors to win and lead the sentient revolution.
In Sentient, players are tasked with choosing from available robots to program in their factory. Each robot that is added modifies your board and attracts the interest of investors for your company. Program your bots efficiently and collect the support of your patrons to build the most formidable operation.
Description from GTS article:
Sentient is a dice-manipulation game by J. Alex Kevern (World’s Fair 1893, Gold West). As with his other games, Sentient is filled with smart, simple, and rewarding choices. Each turn involves choosing an available bot, adding it to your factory, and deciding how to divide your resources between optimizing your bot and wooing investors. Players who enjoy a satisfying puzzle will appreciate the difficulty in adding the chosen bot to their factory. Each slot has a die on either side that will be modified based on the chosen bot card. But, adding another adjacent bot the next turn will modify the dice once again. The dice at the end of the round will determine how efficiently your bots were programmed and will grant you varying points based on the dice numbers. You may have everything perfectly sorted out — that is, until the last bot you choose changes the adjacent dice. Your plan can crumble and points can easily be lost with an errant decision or wrong choice!
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- you're like one of the nicest people ever
- that was a perfect picture round you did awesome
- you got a total of 14 points emerson, which is huge
- look up emerson's games on bgg everybody they're fantastic
- cyber bunny
References (from this video)
- Interesting, clever puzzle design
- Beautiful production and components
- Limited player interaction and social depth
- Downtime and reliance on solitary puzzle-solving
- AI, machine logic and puzzle alignment
- AI robots puzzle environment
- Abstract, puzzle-driven
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area control and scoring multipliers — Control areas by placing workers to trigger card multipliers.
- Card-placement with adjacency requirements — Cards require certain relationships between neighboring dice to score.
- Dice-placing puzzle — Dice represent robots; players place them to satisfy card constraints and score points.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- the best thing about legacy of Dragon Hall is that it's brilliantly written
- it's a really clever game that allows for so much bluffing and doublethink
- this just too much there you want to advance that story quicker
- it took us hours and we felt like we were only in the second chapter
- the end of the game there's also these spy cards which basically mean that you lose you cannot win the game
- it's such a brilliant simple bluffing card game
- it's an incredible production the dice are really nice and the artworks very nice as well
- the theme sounded interesting but professor Evil's gameplay just wasn't a fun cooperative experience for us