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"The robot was advancing fast towards the base, loaded with crystals – but the opponent team's robot was nearing. 'Bzzzzt!' Lightning sparked briefly, and the Bot changed course to unload the crystal a few meters from his base, his programming slightly jammed by the shock wave. The opponent Bot immediately loaded the crystal and proceed to rejoin his base; two other Bots were nearing and they didn't look too friendly! The mechanic sighed heavily as he knew this would inevitably end up in a melee, damaged Bots, and long hours in the repair shop afterwards..."
In Twin Tin Bots, the robot-programming game for the new generation, many corporations have invested in crystal mining after they were discovered as a potent energy source. They designed and improved robots to harvest crystals and a few people can now run a big crystal harvesting rig. Many teams work on the same harvesting plant, but the game's always on to bring more crystals back than the others.
In the game, each player programs two robots to harvest crystals from the game board and bring them back to his base. The catch is that robots repeat their programming, but changes to the program from turn to turn are limited. Robots can also interact with other robots so even the best laid plans can end up slightly different than expected.
The player who harvests the most valuable crystals wins.
GTS 2014 - Twin Tin Bots
- Limited programming keeps it challenging and requires planning ahead.
- Special bonus tiles add unexpected twists and player interaction.
- Direct competition to outdo other programmers.
- Robots can get stuck or 'languish' if not programmed effectively.
- Risk of delivering a gem to the wrong base, giving it to an opponent.
- Program robots to pick up gems
- Lonely Planet
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — On your turn, you can place or remove a programming tile, or perform other actions like grabbing gems or using special tiles.
- player interaction — Robots can steal gems from each other. If somebody is next to you and they have a grab action, they can grab a gem from you.
- Programming — You have 16 tiles that you can program with and you're going to on your turn place one or you might end up removing one but you've got one action you can do. Your basic turns are either putting down a tile or replacing one.
- Set Collection — You're trying to get gems back to your base. Gems are worth different point values (2, 3, and 4 points). When you deliver a gem to your base, it becomes scorable.
- Special Powers — Bonus tiles are awarded when delivering lower point gems, providing special abilities like jumping spaces or shocking other robots to make them drop gems.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- hi everyone welcome to GTS distributions come and play day here in Seattle
- it's a new game by uh Felipe karts who small world and and some other games uh robot programming game
- you're one of the workers on this Lonely Planet and all you really have to do amuse yourself is program robots to pick up gems
- you've got very limited programming abilities
- the complexity isn't in the rules and learning the game it's in how you use the actions that you've been presented with
- we're ready to go it is uh in the warehouse so we'll have uh real copies in just a couple days