kickstarter preview: Bots Battleground & Boogie Dice

An awesome combo of cards and technology!

The following is a preview of a prototype copy of Bots Battleground & Boogie Dice. The artwork, components and rules may not be in their final form.

Overview

This kickstarter really packs a punch because not only are you backing a fun, fast-paced robot battle card game, you’re also backing a unique piece of technology, Boogie Dice.

Boogie Dice have three key pieces of tech inside them: LED lights that offer a large range of color options, a vibration motor that can make them shake or roll themselves and a microphone that allows you to program them through sound and make them roll by snapping, clapping or making a loud noise next to them.

Bots Battleground

Bots Battleground has players battling it out against each other with powerful bots. Bots have an attack value, defense value, and some have special abilities. When you’re the attacker it’s all about having a higher attack value than your opponent’s defense value.

This may sound like a very simple game, but its integration with the Boogie Dice is where the real fun comes in. First, you’ll take turns clapping or snapping to see if it’s your turn to attack. If the die turns red and begins to roll when you clap you have to quickly react and choose one opponent and throw down a bot card from your hand before the die stops rolling (which in our play-through was just 2 seconds!). Then the die will stay red for 10-20 seconds. During that time you and your chosen opponent can swap out bot cards (you can only have one down on the table) to try and get the best attack (if you’re the attacker) and defense (if you’re defending). Battling players can even borrow bot cards from other players that aren’t currently in the battle! The die will then shake/roll to warn players that there are 2 seconds left. After that you compare your bots and determine who wins. The winner collects 2 power tokens, and the loser discards 1 of their power tokens. The first player to get 10 tokens wins.

To add even more chaos and fun, whatever the die rolled itself to at the beginning of the round will add a special condition to the round. It can make it so the lower sum wins instead of the higher sum, or even make it so the attacker is actually the defender. In the end it’s all about reacting quickly so you can come out victorious.

Boogie Dice

On their kickstarter page they mention a 100% smile guarantee. I’ve got to say that while playing this with friends and family, they’ve delivered on that promise! It was so much fun to see how our children’s faces would light up when they would clap and the die would start hopping around on the table rolling itself. It made me want to come up with a younger children’s game that could use the dice, and that’s exactly what these dice are about…

The Boogie Dice (especially the numbered one) are designed to be universal with any game that uses dice. On top of that, you can program the die in an infinite amount of ways between color, vibration and time. It’s going to be a blast to see what the gaming community will do with these!

Final Thoughts

So many games are getting ported over to smartphones and tablets these days, while others are experimenting with companion apps where you have both the physical game and an app that aids you while you play. Many are done very well and are a blast to play. As much as I enjoy digital versions of board games, it’s the physicality of the cards, tokens, dice and other components that keeps pulling me back to opening up those boxes and sitting down at the table to play… the point I’m trying to bring out is that the Boogie Dice, while full of technology, don’t take away from the physicality we all enjoy in games, in fact they augment it!

If all you did was play Bots Battleground with the Boogie Dice, you’d have many hours of fun. However, I’d be surprised to see a gamer that didn’t spend even more time exploring how they could use the dice with the games they own or for creating their own new games.

If you like to tinker/invent/create with technology and games, this is a must have! Bots Battleground will let you have fun exploring some of the possibilities of the Boogie Dice and from there the sky is the limit!