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RoboRally is fun but complicated.

I wanted my latest column for Off the Grid to be under 1,000 words, and I succeeded. Like, by a lot. At a hair under 400, it’s the shortest column I’ve written yet. There’s something to be said for brevity (I say this as I’m worrying about my senior project being too short).

RoboRally is Richard Garfield’s board game that he created after conceptualizing Magic: The Gathering, tried to sell to Wizards of the Coast before pitching Magic, but didn’t get published until a year after Magic got published. <-- [note to self: crappiest sentence I've ever written. I'll let it slide this time, but Never Again.] Confusing, I know.

It’s a really fun game experience, designed for up to eight people but still a blast with only two. RoboRally‘s biggest drawback is its sheer complexity, with dozens of pieces to lose and a complicated but crucial play order to each of the five “registers” in a turn. The complexity is all designed to give the game a more robotic feel, however, and in the end it pays off. Little touches like registers which “lock up” once a robot is sufficiently damaged give the entire game world a stronger sense of unity. And the randomness of drawing movement cards can make for some unusual turns; as I was playing last night, there was one turn where my robot was stuck spinning in circles, with my opponent repeatedly moving onto a conveyor built which kept pushing her right off again. Nothing was accomplished, but it was worth the laugh. Silly robots.

At $50, the game is a bit pricey for most (I managed to get it for 25 at Barnes and Noble), but given the replay value and multiplayer capabilities, it’s as worthwhile an investment as any video game worth the same.

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