The main issue I have with it is that it is very vulnerable to the early frontrunner running away with the whole thing. A couple years ago I finally got a real copy. I've probably been playing Roborally for about 20 years - we played an original version with a family friend, then basically made our own by printing our own boards off the nascent internet. Robo Rally definitely shows its age, and, at this point, its strongest appeal is probably nostalgia. But while there’s fun to be had in the game’s blend of considered planning and frantic, laser-induced panic, it often feels clunky by 21st-century standards. The new version of Robo Rally does have some significant changes, most notably the removal of player elimination. In the 20 years since Robo Rally was first released, board gaming has gone through extraordinary creative growth. Minions and found it wanting I enjoyed it much more.)Ĭomparing Robo Rally to Mechs vs. (Ars’ own Sam Machovech recently reviewed Mechs vs. This League of Legends-themed game takes the idea of a programmed sequence of orders and adapts it for cooperative play, while adding an engaging storyline, greater variety in its scenarios, and an astounding level of presentation.
Just as the card game Dominion introduced the concept of deck building and gave rise to a host of other games that put their own spins on the formula, Robo Rally has been overtaken, most notably by 2016’s Mechs vs. While Robo Rally was perhaps the earliest game to popularize the idea of “programming” actions, it has been outdone by subsequent releases which took the concept and developed it. Recharging stations dotted around the board give you the chance to acquire extra energy, and different combinations of powers can prove useful as the game goes on.
You can use your stash of energy cubes to purchase upgrade cards to get your robot new abilities (this will be familiar to anyone who’s played Garfield’s family-friendly monster battle game King of Tokyo). For one thing, you can use the arena itself to your advantage hopping on a conveyor belt can catapult you toward your next checkpoint.
But eventually you acquire enough that you have no choice but to play one or more as part of your sequence of commands, triggering their effects and forcing you to deal with the unpredictable consequences. Picking up one or two is no big deal-they simply pollute your deck and give you fewer useful options to choose from during a round. These are added to your programming deck and have a variety of derailing effects, all of which make your robot more difficult to control.
Robo Rally’s most anarchic feature, though, is its assortment of damage cards, which you acquire whenever you suffer dings and dents in the arena.