Mechanical Mayhem

Lightning strikes a lightning rod, illuminating the night sky of a dense city! You laugh maniacally as energy surges through your lab sending life to the robotic monstrosity that lied in the center of the room. It begin twitch and shudder! "YES!" you scream in delight as thoughts of destruction and world dominance race through your head. Lost in your day dreams of power you lean on a button, a very big red button that reads "Self Destruct". You look on in horror as your creation EXPLODES sending its pieces flying all over the city!

During your search of the pieces you find out that you are not the only mad scientist whose robot had blown up that night. "NOOO!NO!NO!NO!" you yell in a fit of rage. The only one who deserves to destroy this city via mechanical monolith of massive mayhem is YOU! Not any of these PRETENDERS! You decide then and there to grab as many of their pieces as possible so that they will NEVER be able to complete their robot! "MUAHAHAHAHAHA!" you laugh as you run into the dark streets of the city.

The idea behind Mechanical Mayhem is that you play a mad scientist and that you must collect as many robotic pieces as possible by the time all the pieces have been collected and the player with the most pieces wins. Initially though the idea was that each player had their own set of robotic pieces to collect, they could not collect other players' pieces, and the player to collect all of their own pieces first wins. But thanks to my team we were able to see the fault in the initial design which was that it possibly went against the instruction set down by the assignment in that it involved players trying to reach a goal first (collect all 4 of their robot pieces). We resolved this by changing the robotic pieces from player specific to generic and made it into a sort of Hungry Hungry Hippos thing where the player who gets the most wins. Though every other mechanic in the game has stayed the same from the cards to the game board.

I really like the idea for the board where it is broken up into 9 tiles as this allows players to generate a different board every time they play the game. Of course, the tiles must be placed in a certain pattern, detailed in the rules. Though this does little to effect the number of combinations that players can create.

Collecting itself would be too easy so we have some cards that the player can choose to draw in exchange for their movement, so instead of moving that turn they draw a card. These cards can benefit you, deter others, as well as hurt you as well. So there is always some risk in sacrificing your movement.

Overall the game is very simple and easy to learn. It has proven to be fast paced and exciting right to the moment the winner is decided. So I hope you have fun playing our game and by all means let the mechanical mayhem begin!!

Pieces:

- 4 player pieces
- 16 robot pieces
- D6 dice
- 9 board tiles
- 26 gadget cards


Rules:

1) Shuffle tiles then place them in a 3x3 formation as shown: [*][*][*]
                                                                                                [*][*][*]
                                                                                                [*][*][*]
2) Place all place pieces in the center square of board.

3) Each player places 4 robot pieces on any square of any adjacent tile.

Gameplay:

1) Player has the choice of either drawing a gadget card or moving their piece.

2) If the player chooses to move their piece they must role a D6 and move that many spaces.

3) If the player chooses to draw a gadget card, they draw from the top of the deck and can either play it the card immediately or hold it in their hand.

4) When a player lands or passes over a square containing a robot piece, they claim that piece and add it to their robot pile.

5) the game ends when all the robot pieces are collected and the player with the most pieces wins.

Additional Rules:

- Players can move any direction except diagonally.
- Players can hold a maximum of 2 cards in their hand.
- Should players have more than 2 cards they must either play or discard cards until they have, at most, 2 left     in their hand.
- Cards are placed in the discard pile after they are used.
- When gadget deck is finished, reshuffle the discard pile and draw from the top of the new gadget deck.
- When targeting a player for a card, announce the card played and the target of said card. Then place that card in front of that player. The target player then discards that card when its duration has ended.