RAMbots

RAMbots

Designer: Kory Heath
Type: Icehouse
Status: Free
BGG entry: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/15193
Available at: http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Kory/Games/RAMbots/

Deep in the heart of The Complex - a sprawling, seemingly infinite maze of gleaming corridors and whirring bots - the Master Priority Scheduler has awakened you for yet another task. You find yourself in a wide metallic chamber, featureless save for the glowing beacons floating near the center. Looks like data-collection again - typically the simplest of tasks. However, as your sensors sweep across the expanse of the chamber, you register the existence of other bots hovering out on the perimeter.

Uh oh. A Multi-Task. Time to check the precedence stack and get going.

But you pause to wonder, as you have so many times before: what is this Master Priority Scheduler? What is the Ultimate Task, of which your own is but a tiny, insignificant fraction? How big is this Complex? What's Outside? Is there an Outside? Sadly, the answers to these questions a simple RAMbot is not given to know. All you know is the task that has been set before you: to collect your precious data; to collect it in the proper order; to collect it as quickly as possible.

And, of course, to RAM the living snot out of anyone who gets in your way.

RAMbots is an Icehouse game for two to four players. Each player controls a single RAMbot, and will lay out strings of instructions which tell the RAMbot how to move and shoot beams of colored energy. The first player to tag four goals in a specified order wins the game. RAMbots requires an Icehouse set, a chessboard, and some kind of shield or screen for each player - anything big enough to hide a handful of Icehouse pieces behind.