So you’ll notice a bit of a different format. This is more my review style format, but breaking down the page and game from what I can tell on the crowdfunding page.

RoboMon Quick Overview

RoboMon from Barrett Publishing probably seems familiar. It definitely builds on the ideas and themes that you get in Pokemon and Digimon. You are exploring a world, getting into robot battles, leveling up your robots until you can become a fully licensed RoboMon Ranger.

This game is trying to do a bit of everything, but in a way that looks like it could work. You go around maps which lead to fights, getting items, comic book style cut scenes and more in the game. But the core two pieces, from what I can tell are using that map book exploration and then the tactical combat.

Of course there are robots as well. And they are probably going to be the main part of the game. Getting and building up your team of robots and then leveling them up. So it appears to have either some resource gathering, or more likely, fighting, getting money from those fights, buying stuff to level up your robots and then doing that.

What Doesn’t Work?

Obviously this is just speculation, but I have two areas of concern for this game. Firstly is that there is no rulebook. There are rules reference cards and as you play through the game, and open the box, it is supposed to teach you. That is always a concern because if I need to reference something later, how is that handled. Yes, rules reference, but what if it’s not on that. I know it was covered but how can I find it again.

I also wonder a little bit about the open world and freedom of the game. You can do anything in any order, but generally that means that there is probably kind of an order that you want to follow. Sleeping Gods did make this work, though. In that, there are easy areas, and as you go other further in the book of maps from the center, you find harder things. So if it gives that sort of open feel to it, I like that. Plus, as a solo game, it can work better as well. It’s open and free and no turn order, well, it is just me, so that works.

What Works?

Firstly what draws me in is the theme. I don’t have a ton of connection to Pokemon or Digimon. I watched a little Digimon growing up, and I thought the show was entertaining. But I never played any of the Pokemon games, though I am tempted regularly to pick one up. This might push that over the edge. But I’ve always liked this idea of exploring, leveling up, getting new robots (monsters) and doing that some more.

I really like the aesthetic of the game as well. I think that the work is nice. And it gives a 16-bit vibe to it with being much cleaner and clearer. I think I’d be less interested in this if it was actually 16-bit or 8-bit artwork. But this just gives a little bit of that feel to the artwork which gives it a bit of a 90’s vibe.

The solo nature of the game also works for me. It looks like two player is just splitting up control of things, which is something that’s easy enough to do in any true solo game. This is one that I could see getting and having fun streaming because of the solo play. And I think that I gravitate towards games that give that balance between story and tactics in the game. It’s nice to be able to change it up every now and again.

Who Is This For?

I think someone who likes the video games for Pokemon and wants to get some of that experience in a board game. This to me is that perfect thing, or maybe if your significant other or a close friend who maybe doesn’t board game. Get this if they like Pokemon and play it two players to have that shared gaming experience in a world that is going to feel familiar.

But I also think it’s for gamers who like adventure games. And for people who don’t mind playing a solo game. My guess is that this will be easier to setup than a Sleeping Gods, or Stars of Akarios. But if you can leave it setup, even better. I really think this will give that lighter adventure gaming itch a good scratch.

Back or Brick

Final Thoughts on RoboMon

This is where I’m going to take about a few things with this game. Firstly the price of the game, because it doesn’t really fit into what works or doesn’t work. It’s unique and probably should always be talked about anyways. This is a solid price for this game. 300+ page adventure book, 70+ maps, 300+ cards, all of that is great. It even comes with a pencil for the character sheet. $80+shipping is a solid price. I also wonder how likely it’ll show up in retail so this might be your best chance to get it.

For me, though, I am torn on the game. I think I’d likely enjoy this game a lot. I like the artwork, I like the theme, and I love games with fun adventure, story, combat, everything that this game is offering. The question I am asking myself is do I need another game like this? Especially since I just got in Oathsworn, Stars of Akarios, and Etherfields with Chronicles of Drunagor not too far behind and ISS Vanguard not far behind that. But with some of those, Oathsworn and ISS Vanguard, I probably want to do in a group. This is one that is made for me to play solo.

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The Premise

The Characters

The Bosses

The Guilds

The Levels

The Boards

Cards vs Dice

Character Leveling

Skills, Weapons and More

Quests

In Town Activities

Level Events and Monsters

Boss Battles

Building a Character

Building a Level Part 1

So the first level is going to be a bit different than every other level. In those you’re going to be able to start in immediately doing whatever you want. And I do want you to be able to do that mainly on the first level, but I also want to help players along with knowing how to play the game, so I want to kind of create some of a walkthrough or how to play within the first level.

The first level is going to have basically everything that a normal level would have. You will have NPC’s and PC’s to interact with, you will have quests, floor events, the guild and monsters, and you’ll have a shop to go to.

That’s probably the first difference is that you won’t have several different shops to go to, you will have a single bazaar that you will go to and you will go to it on your first turn. The first floor event you flip over, before you decide where you’ll go will direct everyone to go shopping. Why do that? Because you don’t start with armor, weapons, etc. It will take you through the shopping experience, let you spend your money and explain how skills work and weapons work. When you talk to the shopkeeper they are going to explain and give examples of the cards and how they work so that you aren’t having to spend as much time in the rule book learning that. That stuff will be in the rule book for refresher, but it won’t be something you need to read to get started.

The next day you’ll flip a new event and it’ll send you fall out to go fight a monster. This is going to give a chance to show how the monsters work and show one of the key mechanics for a level as you draw a hand of modifier cards and use them. This also will show off how XP is gained and tracked as the players defeat the monsters and get rewards. This should be a fairly boring but quick event for everyone to go through, but it’s also important because besides maybe a few PC and NPC actions as well as the shopping, you’ll be given the option to use modifiers on almost everything and to learn how they’ll be removed from your deck for the boss battle and how you can manipulate that.

The third level event is going to kick off the game proper. It’s going to be a level event that everyone has to go to and deal with. This is where the whole game will kick off. There probably will be some thing that you’ll spend a card on, but I don’t really want to spoil any story ideas right now. But most likely this event will lead to some quests or paths that can be opened up in the game.

Then for the rest of the level, another as many rounds as you want, there really won’t be any negatives, creatures will run out so you can’t grind character levels on level one, NPC’s and PC’s will run out eventually, but from that point you’ll be able to go and do quests, fight monsters, research, whatever it is. Also from this point on, there won’t likely be another set of level events that require all players to do something. It might be a very rare occasion where a player is needed to go to a level event, but that would only be if they don’t want to send a guild marker there, or they can’t because the guild is too small.

Once the players have decided they’ve done everything that they need, the boss monster will be up for them to fight. And I again want to do some of a tutorial for this. That means that this is probably going to be a smaller map, just to fit some text onto the page. I’ve talked about how the boss monsters and boss battles will work, but the first boss battle is going to lay out those details as well as how turn order works. Don’t worry, there will be cheat sheet cards that explain how both the levels and the combat works that will have this information as well, but I want to be able to go into more detail and lay out kind of that first monster turn and what is going to happen as well as how some of the combat will work for the players. I don’t with it, however, want to tell the players what they have to do, no play this card as the optimal play or attack this way as the optimal way.

Finally, just to recap some of the layout of how this will all be set-up. This will be in a book, there probably will be a page of intro story that can be read at the very beginning and how to use the book/mark where you are at, that sort of thing, but general layout will be, on the left page, you’ll have spots for all the actions that you can take. For the quests, monsters, NPC’s, etc. Most won’t be limited as to how many people can go there, but sometimes they might be, in particular for something like the monsters, the quests, or the level events there might be a limit, otherwise people can go to the same spot if they want. With this there will also be spots to put down the cards for the level. That might be the level events, it might be cards that you have unlocked as new quests, it might be a list of the NPC’s or PC’s whom you can talk to, or it might be the monsters that you could fight. These are generally going to be small cards, think like the modifier and item card size from Gloomhaven if you are familiar with that game. They aren’t meant to have a ton of information on them, they are meant to drive you to the story book or adventure book in the game. Then on the right page you’ll have the map for the boss battle. It’s going to also help you know what type of level it is, there will be artwork throughout the levels as well, but this will be generally a large spot to highlight that.

The next part of the level design will start to dive into samples of how quests, level events, NPC and PC interactions and more might go.

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