Robo Rally Game Review

This game has probably been reviewed ad nauseum, but here’s my take on Robo Rally. I am reviewing the Wizards of the Coast release of Robo Rally that was released 1994-1995. I have not yet played the new release. But from what I’ve seen, Avalon Hill has really polished this gem up.

Theme
This game is set in a widget factory, after-hours. The game is a gladiatorial race through a factory floor amongst robots. The layout of this factory floor serves no logical purpose in real-life. The factory floor is filled with a crazy tangle of conveyer belts, industrial lasers, pits, crushers and pusher-panels. Amidst all this chaos you’re trying to program a robot to race among other robots to flags of ascending numbers until you reach the final flag. To top this off each robot has a front-facing laser themselves and there is the possibility to pick up additional gadgets to upgrade your robot with. The upgrades for your robot are of a wide variety. There are gadgets that give your robot's laser a turret, shields, radio-control transmitter, et al. I love the theme of this game. I generally don’t like a game that has so much chaos, but this chaos works. I give the theme three out of three stars.

Rules
The rules for this game are great. They present the game to you in a really fun format. There are profiles for each robot, that are nothing but chrome (the profiles that is, not the robot). There are sample boards and rules variants for playing the game as a ‘Capture the Flag’ scenario. The rules are lengthy, but well organized. I give the rules three out of three stars. The rules are in black and white. It would be nice if they were in color, but that’s just getting nit-picky.

Production Quality
I can’t say enough about Robo Rally as a package. Each of the card decks have their own individual full color box. The miniatures are well-sculpted lead. The robots are designed by the great Phil Foglio. The boards are full color and fully interchangeable with each other board, to provide you with endless possibilities for gameplay. My gripes with the production of this game is that the flags chits are the same size as the squares they’re meant to be placed on. This makes for a small problem. If the square you’ve placed the flag on has a wall or walls in it, you will not be able to see them without shifting the flag tile around a bit. Then there’s the possibility that you forget to check to see if the flag square has any walls concealed under the flag chit and that can really hamper your movement. Some friends have suggested that I cut the flag chit down a bit in size so that it fits better in the square. I have entertained the thought, but I’ve never done it. I find that turning the flag chits diagonal to the square makes more of the square's features visible. Also the miniatures have a raised arrow on their bases and for some people this is difficult to see as the miniatures do not come painted. I remedied this by painting my miniatures. Additionally, I painted the base of the miniature black and the raised arrow bright yellow so that the raised arrow really stands out. There are a ton of extra life chits and damage chits. To keep them from scattering about the box, I’ve placed each typed of chit in a film roll container and they fit perfectly in the box. I give the production quality of this game two out of three stars.

Luck Factor
If the luck in a game becomes too clunky or gets in my way of having a good time that really bothers me. Robo Rally has the variables of only getting nine cards each turn (if you remain undamaged) and choosing five of those cards as how you will move that turn. Everyone shares this same variable. Like receiving your city cards in TransAmerica, it is customary to gripe about the cards you’ve received. If you don’t do this people will start to think that you’ve got a great hand and that you are about to wipe the board with them. So it’s good to furrow your brow and frown a bit, even if you just got the exact cards you need to wipe the board with your opponents. The other fantastic variable to this game is that every player’s planning is simultaneous and blind. So you can only guess as to what your opponents are going to do. There is the possibility that someone else’s move pushes you over one space thereby screwing up your entire move and changing your game winning rush at the flag to a full-throttle dash into a pit. This game is fairly lethal to your robot, so it is good that each player gets a number of extra lives. The randomness to this game really doesn’t bother me, to the tune of three out of three stars.

Replayability
This game has depth. This game has variety, much the same as Settlers or any euro-game with a variable board that changes from game to game. This game can be set up to handle from two to eight players with little effort or change to the game play. I really love playing this game every chance that I get. There are a number of the upgrade gadgets that I’ve never even seen, much less played. I really do not like to play the same game back to back, but I could play this game frequently and not get sick of it. I give the replayability of this game three out of three stars.

Overall
My wife hates this game. Hates? Not strong enough. Loathes this game. Pure unadulterated loathing. She claims that since girls mostly play with dolls and tea sets as kids and boys play with Legos and blocks, boys have a natural grasp of spatial reasoning. I just think that she’s lousy at the game and blames society for rarely beating me at Robo Rally. Most guys I know love this game. It was a long time staple of our weekly game group. We’d have about 5-6 guys programming the robots to knock each other out of the way in a robo-chariot type race that would make Ben Hur soil his loin cloth. This game is a lot of fun. If you ask me to play Robo Rally, the answer will always be 'yes!'
Overall I give Robo Rally a rating of nine out of ten.

Game on!

Sadly, Avalon Hill's version anything BUT polished.

Be happy you have the original version.