Off the Grid reviews RoboRally
by Scott Jon Siegel 
{ Apr 5th 2007 at 11:58AM }
Every other week Scott Jon Siegel contributes Off the Grid, a column on gaming away from the television screen or monitor.
In 1992, Richard Garfield met with a new company called Wizards of the Coast in order to get them to publish a board game he designed with Mike Davis. They liked what they saw, but at the time they weren't interested in board games; they wanted something more portable, a game that "would go over well at conventions." For this, Garfield revisited a card game he'd first designed in the early 80's.
The card game became the phenomenally successful Magic: The Gathering, but we're not dealing with that right now. A year after Magic first hit the shelves of hobby stores, Wizards of the Coast published Garfield's clever board game about robots: RoboRally.
The premise is simple enough to be appealing. A factory's computer reprograms its robotic workers during after-hours to have a little fun. Robots compete against each other to capture flags placed around the factory, while avoiding hazards like pits and lasers, and each other. Sounds like fun? Well, it is. Eventually.
During each turn, players play movement cards to define a sequence of five actions for their robots during that turn. The resulting gameplay feels very robotic in nature (but in a good way!). Players send instructions to their robots, and the robots obey, when they can. The relative freedom of each player's moves is limited by the luck of the draw, as well as the perils of the game board.
The game comes with four different two-sided boards, and the accompanying course manual lays out over 30 different configurations for play. There are a lot of ways to play RoboRally, but there's a price to be paid for so much flexibility. RoboRally's a complicated game, with less-than-obvious rules and dozens of pieces to lose. Between program sheets, option cards, program cards, life tokens, damage tokens, power down tokens, archive markers, flags, and, of course, the robots, you'd better get a few ziploc bags to help manage the mess.
And don't expect to understand what you're doing the first time through. The best way to learn RoboRally is to play it. By the end of your first game, you'll be better tuned to the nuances of RoboRally's delicate rules. The reward for all of this complexity is an entertaining, smart, strategic gameplay experience. With a little practice, you'll be thinking like a robot in no time.
Scott Jon Siegel is a fledgling game designer, and fancies himself a bit of a writer on the topic as well. His words and games can be found at numberless, which is almost always a work in progress.
In 1992, Richard Garfield met with a new company called Wizards of the Coast in order to get them to publish a board game he designed with Mike Davis. They liked what they saw, but at the time they weren't interested in board games; they wanted something more portable, a game that "would go over well at conventions." For this, Garfield revisited a card game he'd first designed in the early 80's.The card game became the phenomenally successful Magic: The Gathering, but we're not dealing with that right now. A year after Magic first hit the shelves of hobby stores, Wizards of the Coast published Garfield's clever board game about robots: RoboRally.
The premise is simple enough to be appealing. A factory's computer reprograms its robotic workers during after-hours to have a little fun. Robots compete against each other to capture flags placed around the factory, while avoiding hazards like pits and lasers, and each other. Sounds like fun? Well, it is. Eventually.
During each turn, players play movement cards to define a sequence of five actions for their robots during that turn. The resulting gameplay feels very robotic in nature (but in a good way!). Players send instructions to their robots, and the robots obey, when they can. The relative freedom of each player's moves is limited by the luck of the draw, as well as the perils of the game board.
The game comes with four different two-sided boards, and the accompanying course manual lays out over 30 different configurations for play. There are a lot of ways to play RoboRally, but there's a price to be paid for so much flexibility. RoboRally's a complicated game, with less-than-obvious rules and dozens of pieces to lose. Between program sheets, option cards, program cards, life tokens, damage tokens, power down tokens, archive markers, flags, and, of course, the robots, you'd better get a few ziploc bags to help manage the mess.And don't expect to understand what you're doing the first time through. The best way to learn RoboRally is to play it. By the end of your first game, you'll be better tuned to the nuances of RoboRally's delicate rules. The reward for all of this complexity is an entertaining, smart, strategic gameplay experience. With a little practice, you'll be thinking like a robot in no time.
Scott Jon Siegel is a fledgling game designer, and fancies himself a bit of a writer on the topic as well. His words and games can be found at numberless, which is almost always a work in progress.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brandon @ Apr 5th 2007 12:10PM
I've seen this game before... I may have played it if it is the game I'm thinking of it is pretty fun.
jron @ Apr 5th 2007 1:12PM
Roborally always makes my head hurt :-)
Maybe weblogs inc should have a board gaming blog?
Gavin @ Apr 5th 2007 12:36PM
A friend of mine had this but everytime he tried to get us to play we'd just end up playing Magic anyways. In many ways that is what I ended up hating about Magic and other card games like it...they helped erode the gaming industry and pushed board games into the shadows. Even RPG games suffered because it was just so much easier to get people to play Magic.
I was in pretty serious gaming group during the late 80's and we would get together every weekend to play AD&D, DC Heroes, Supremacy, Paranoia, Talisman, Axis & Allies and tons of other great classics. When the card game boom hit in the early 90's and my group had broken up because of people moving off, it was almost impossible to find the same kind of gaming group because EVERYONE seemed to just be playing Magic.
So I never got to play RoboRally, but came close to several times. Garfield ended up being his own worst enemy if you ask me.
Todd @ Apr 5th 2007 12:52PM
I think their original name was "Wizards of the West Coast" before shortening the name. I met a rep when Magic: The Gathering was first being launched and he gave me free boosters and packs. That was the company name on his card.
Reijin @ Apr 5th 2007 1:03PM
My friends and I have get together quite regularly and play board games (as well as table top RPGs and, of course, video games), and I can say first hand this game is a blast. The more people you have playing it, the more fun.
The first time we played (which will probably be the most fun), we had the maximum number of 8 people and none of us could stop laughing or having fun with it. The big key to keeping up the fun with this game is to introduce new people into the mix with it. I noticed that we have a lot less fun when everyone knows the game and we're just playing it to win. A big part of it is not knowing what to do, and by and large, that's a huge part of the fun.
Bruce Snell @ Apr 5th 2007 1:44PM
This is an outstanding game. Its probably my favorite non-video game, but it really takes a certain type of person to play this. Me and all my engineering inclined buddies love this game, but most of my other friends hate it because it makes their head hurt.
Myrpok @ Apr 5th 2007 1:54PM
I love this game, but unfortunately the appeal for most casual board gamers go down the drain when they realize it takes 3 hours to play and most of what you do is meticulously plan your robots moves... just so that someone pushes you down a hole right before you capture the flag.
CJ @ Apr 5th 2007 2:02PM
I love this game. Luckily I have a copy of it and the Armed and Dangerous expansion. I just wished they would put it back in print, my current set is starting to show a lot of wear. My friends and I have put a lot of mileage on this game.
It is incredibly hard to find these days and if you do find a copy it is usually ridiculously expensive.
187 @ Apr 5th 2007 2:03PM
My friends and I have played this game quite a few times and it is a blast. We coined a phrase: "Doin' the robo dance." That is when somebody is moving around in their chair trying to figure out what will happen when their avatar executes the moves they are planning.
Is it just me or does the XBLA game roboblitz appear to have been influenced by this board game? Not in game play mechanics, but in terms of graphical presentation and some of the in-game items. I did some searches to see if this was referenced on the roboblitz website and could find nothing indicating they were influenced by robo rally. Heck, now that I think about it both games are kind of 'physics' based .
Chris @ Apr 5th 2007 3:30PM
Why is Joystiq reviewing a 14-year-old game?
ksmith @ Apr 5th 2007 3:35PM
I love this game. I have been heming and hawing about purchasing this game for almost a year now. I finally broke down and bought the reprint version of it. As it has been clearly stated above, this game's a blast. But you do need to set aside a good chunk of time to play.
As a bonus, you can look online and find PDF's of homemade boards you can print out an use when the stock one's get to repetative.
If you'd like to try before you buy, WotC have tutorial/demo up on their website, or try one of the open source projects up on SourceForge.
http://botsnscouts.sourceforge.net/
Scott Jon Siegel @ Apr 5th 2007 3:50PM
@Chris:
Because it's awesome, and there are still plenty of people out there who've never played it.
jonathan_kort @ Apr 5th 2007 4:38PM
This game would be perfect for Xbox Live Arcade!!
Marlowe @ Apr 6th 2007 8:42AM
Wow, this review is so off-base I'm appalled.
Not only is this game instantly playable, it's easy to win the first time out. I won the game the first time I played against people who played it many times before.
A co-worker we invited to play the next night also won his first game.
Now we work at a computer game company, so we might have a bit of a leg-up on people who haven't worked with programming logic. Still, while I have a computer science degree and have coded games in Assembler, I am now an artist. And HE was an artist, not a coder, and he still won.
I found this game completely intuitive, easy to learn, awesomely fun, and the expansion pack (that was available back then, with its new boards) made it even more fun.
Choosing your code cards is fun and logical. Knowing how the board elements work is essential, and you can USE the board elements to get your robot to his goal faster.
As you take damage, you get fewer cards to choose from to create your move sequences, until you heal up. Take too much damage and code cards get locked, and you MUST use them each round, which can make for some very fun situations.
The FUN part is when something happens to block your move, and suddenly the rest of your code sequence must be carried out, but on a different portion of the board than you had planned, which leads to completely unpredictable results, and could even bring robot death.
Too many pieces to lose? You get one robot for each player, and the rest is cards and small cardboard pieces. There are far fewer pieces "to lose" in this game than many board games with all of their cardboard bits. This one has its share of those, but RISK has more pieces. Ever play "Buck Rogers?" Hundreds of little plastic rocket ships to lose.
Bottom line is this is the one board game that I would cancel my evening plans to play if someone said "We're playing tonight."
-M-
Scott Jon Siegel @ Apr 6th 2007 10:56AM
@Marlowe:
Keep in mind that the first time you played, you played against people who knew what they were doing, which ALWAYS makes a big different. Neither me nor my opponent had ever played RoboRally before.
All board games have an apprehension curve, I know, but RoboRallly's the steepest I've encountered yet in this column. We had to restart the game twice because we realized we were playing wrong.
You do a decent job explaining the basics of the rules, though, and I'm wondering if the problem might actually be with the way the rules are laid out in the manual. Several aspects of gameplay we had to intuit, because we simply couldn't find a concrete description of them.
We seem to agree about the game being fun, so I can't imagine my review is as "off-base" as you think it is. I've played RoboRally several times since reviewing it, and it's a total blast. It's not immediately accessible, though, and for some people used to more instant gratification, that might be a turn-off.
Where's your company located, Marlowe? Maybe we could play sometime. ^_^