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Engineers, assemble! Time to fire up your brain circuits, tighten a few bolts and show off your robot-building brilliance. In Robo Rescue: Origins, you’re not just building machines, you’re proving you’ve got what it takes to earn a spot at the Martian Exhibition. It’s a quick, thinky little game where you’ll need clever hands and cool nerves… or at least a bit of luck.
The Kickstarter for Robo Rescue: Origins goes live today, 19 May.
The game will actually be completely free during the campaign and if you want extra copies to play with more people, you can grab those for just a dollar. It’s being published by Everland Studio, which is a brand-new offshoot of Lemery Games.
👥 1+ players, ages 8+
⌛ Playing time: 10 minutes
📝 Designers: Pierrot
🎨 Artwork: Zoltán Nagy
🏢 Publisher: Everland Studio (preview copy provided)
Check out the Kickstarter campaign by clicking here
Gameplay Overview
At its heart, Robo Rescue: Origins is a compact card game played over five rounds, or six if you’re playing solo. Your goal is simple: win more rounds than your opponents by building the best-performing robots. Sounds straightforward, and it is… until it isn’t.
Each player starts with their own draw deck and a personal display of three face-up cards. Every round has four turns. In the first two turns, you draw and play two cards from your deck. In the last two turns, you draw one card from the deck, and then choose your second card either from your display or by drawing again.
Once you’ve picked your cards, you play them into one of four lab areas on your board. There are two workshop areas and two storage areas. Where you play each card makes all the difference in how many points you can score, and whether you’ll score that area at all.
In the workshop, the idea is to collect different robot components. You can only place one of each type in each area, but if all the cards are the same colour, you’ll get a tidy little bonus. It’s a satisfying challenge to balance variety with colour matching, and the scoring is nicely intuitive. You get points for the printed values on the cards, plus one extra point per card, or two if they all match in colour.
The storage areas work a bit differently. Each card must be a different colour, and from the second card onward, each one needs to show a robot part that matches a part already placed in that area. It sounds a bit technical, but in practice, it’s like finding pieces that fit into the same blueprint. If you manage to stack it well, the end-of-round scoring here can be very satisfying. You score the robot parts that show up on all cards, and the more cards you’ve added, the better the bonus.
Even if you’ve built clever combos across all four areas, you’re only allowed to score two per round. The player with the highest score that round wins it and gets to keep one of their scoring cards as a trophy. The rest are discarded, and everyone resets for the next round. After five rounds, the person with the most round wins gets the title of top engineer and a metaphorical one-way ticket to Mars.
Artwork, Components and Clarity
For a game that comes in such a small box, Robo Rescue: Origins has plenty of visual charm. The artwork is playful without being over the top, with a comic book sci-fi look that suits the theme nicely. Everything from the quirky engineers to the robot parts feels full of personality, without getting in the way of the gameplay.
It’s not just about looks, either. The design is smart and clean, with colour-coded backgrounds and symbols that make it easy to tell cards apart and spot your best options. Even when your lab is full of cards, it never feels messy or hard to follow.
As for components, it’s a simple card game at its core, but the quality is solid. The cards have a linen finish and feel sturdy enough to last through plenty of games. Everything in the box is focused on clarity and usability, which helps keep the pace quick and the table presence tidy.
Our Experience
In our plays of Robo Rescue: Origins, the first thing we noticed was how much the game relies on your card draws. Since most of your hand each round comes from your personal deck, you’re often reacting rather than planning several steps ahead. Sometimes you feel like a master engineer when the perfect parts fall into place. Other times, nothing fits and you’re tossing cards into the trash pile, feeling like your robot’s held together with duct tape and hope.
It can be frustrating, but because you’re only scoring two of the four areas each round, a bad hand doesn’t usually sink your entire game. There’s enough flexibility to shift gears and make the best of what you’ve drawn.
We also appreciated how smooth the multiplayer experience was. Since players take turns at the same time using their own decks and displays, there’s barely any downtime. That said, each player does need their own deck, so keep that in mind if you’re playing with more people.
The solo mode mirrors the multiplayer experience quite closely. You’re still solving the same puzzle, just without having to compete against other scores. It works well, keeps the same tension, and honestly might be one of the best ways to learn the game before bringing it to the table with others.
Our Thoughts
Robo Rescue: Origins is a clever little game that knows exactly what it wants to be. It’s quick, colourful and surprisingly thinky for such a small footprint. It’s definitely a game for players who enjoy puzzles and working within tight constraints. You won’t find long-term strategies or big combo engines here. It’s more about adapting to what you draw and making the most of the moment.
The randomness is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it keeps the game feeling fresh, and forces you to think on your feet. On the other, it can be swingy. If you’re someone who gets annoyed when your clever setup is wrecked by one unlucky draw, this might not be your favourite.
It’s also fairly low on interaction. Apart from comparing scores at the end of each round, you’re mostly in your own little lab, doing your own thing. That might be a downside if you prefer games with more direct back-and-forth.
But overall, we enjoyed our time with it. It’s the kind of game that’s easy to bring to the table, plays quickly, and offers a nice balance of luck and light tactics. There’s enough challenge to keep you engaged, but it never overstays its welcome.
And hey, building robots for a Martian expo? That’s just cool.
📝 We received a copy of the game from Everland Studio.
