I'm also announcing my next project, Gears & Peers. It should be easier to understand than some of my other projects. Players crash bots, use their other bots to pick up the gears from the crash sites, and try to get their gear-carrying bots to the warps. The complexity comes from the double-blind decisions and predicting where robots will go.
Here's a mock-up:
I think it looks pretty nifty, but that's mainly because I got to apply textures to my simple vector work using Inkscape's mask tool.
- On the top-left of the map, players will see how many robots they currently hold.
- On the top-right of the map, players will see how many robots they can earn by choosing not to place any this turn.
- On the bottom-left of the map, players can adjust how many steps they want the currently placed robots to take. (New robots always take one step outwards from their warps.) This applies to all robots no matter who owns them. The result is the sum of all of the players' adjustments (plus one since robots will move one step forward by default). Steps in reverse are considered negative. If the result is zero then robots will simply turn around.
- The bottom-right corner should be obvious. It will also be the place where players who have ended their turn can vote to add a timer to end the phase.
- The tube-like objects on the four sides of the map are warps. They may be clicked to have held robots enter through them. When multiple players choose the same warp, all of the new robots explode without leaving gears. Robots which enter a warp from the map give all of their held gears to their owner and are removed from the game. (New robots do not warp in until after all robots have moved.)
- On the bottom-left of each robot, the green number next to the arrow represents the turn order of the robot. All of the robots placed during the same round will have the same number displayed. Robots placed in earlier rounds will move before robots placed in later rounds.
- On the top-right of each robot, the green number next to the spinning gear represents the number of gears the robot is carrying. The gears displayed underneath represent the owners of the gears held.
- The gears wandering about in the empty spaces are gears that have not been picked up yet.
