One of my favorite things about Gen Con this year was the Gaming with GeekDad time I spent with a family on their first visit to the convention – and in particular, introducing them to RobotLab: The Card Game.
RobotLab is a card game for 2-5 players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 20 minutes to play. Created by XYZ Game Labs, the game Kickstarted successfully in early 2017, and sells for $19.99. It’s a competitive game that’s easy to learn and mixes luck, strategy, and opponent interference.
Just 85 cards. (86 if you happen to have the Kickstarter edition.)
Here’s the card list:
The Kickstarter edition of the game includes an additional action card, the Mad Scientist.
RobotLab’s artwork – which I like for its Saturday-morning-cartoon feel – is by Galactabee.
Everybody chooses a body. A Robot Body card, that is. The color of the Robot Body determines the color robot each player will try to build. Any unused body cards get set aside. Shuffle the rest of the deck and stack the cards face down – this is the Lab. A discard pile – the Trash – will form next to it.
Choose the first player any way you see fit. In a two-player game, the first player should draw three cards from the Lab for their hand, and the second player then draws five. In games of 3 to 5 players, the first player draws three, and subsequent players draw four, except for the last player, who will draw a full hand of five cards.
And now you’re ready to play. To win, just complete your robot by adding two arms, two legs, and a head, all matching the body color. (Rainbow Part cards can go on any color robot, and the Any Part card includes a Head, Arm, and Leg.)
Each player’s turn consists of three phases:
Once the Lab deck runs out, the Trash is shuffled and becomes the new Lab, but this doesn’t occur intil the Lab is empty AND a player is forced to draw a card.
And that’s it: Play continues clockwise around the table until someone has a complete robot.
Yes, you’ll notice that there’s no “Remove A Part” option. And that’s where the player interference comes in: When you start sticking non-matching colors on other folks’ robots, someone’s going to need an Action Card to come into play.
Here’s the Action Card breakdown:
Additionally, the Malfunction!, Disassemble, and ERR0R cards have orange sunburst exclamation point symbols on them, designating them as Bonus Action cards: They can be played at any time, whether it’s your turn or not, or as soon as you draw them, or even (the game instructions note somewhat gleefully) as a reaction to someone else finishing their robot.
One other note: Players can look through the cards in the trash at any time, which can help shape a strategy.
It’s easy to teach and learn, and it’s fun. (And I’d like to add a note of appreciation for the effort that went into creating a clearly-written and well-organized set of instructions. Few things frustrate me like an unclear rule set.) Even younger players should be able to catch on quickly on how to throw a monkey wrench into someone else’s plans, and the value of checking the trash to see whether that blue leg you need is there or not. There’s a nice level of strategy, despite the game’s simplicity.
Also, on a design note: I like that XYZ labs included words and symbols on each card to designate the color and part, just to keep things clear and accessible.
In fact, the game offers alternate rules if you’ve got a full crew of younger players: Just remove all the action cards, and during the first phase of a player’s turn, the options become Attach or Detach a part.
The Kickstarter version also includes a single Mad Scientist card, which, the creators note, “tends to make the game more dependent on luck.” The Mad Scientist directs the player to scrap their entire hand, search the Lab AND the Trash for any card, play it immediately, scrap all the cards in the Lab, and then skip the Discard and Draw phases.
RobotLab is a fun, quick play, and you don’t even have to take just my word for it: The family we played it with drove home six hours from Gen Con on Sunday, and when they got there, they broke out RobotLab.
XYZ Game Labs provided a copy of RobotLab for this review.
This post was last modified on September 10, 2018 1:40 pm
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