RoboRally

RoboRally, also stylized as Robo Rally, is a board game for two to eight players designed by Richard Garfield and first published by Wizards of the Coast in 1994. Later expansions and revised editions were released by Avalon Hill and, more recently, Renegade Games. Each player controls a small robot navigating a dangerous factory floor covered in conveyor belts, rotating gears, pits, and mounted lasers, aiming to steer the robot through a numbered sequence of checkpoints before any rival does. Rather than issuing moves directly, players build a short program each round from a hand of randomly dealt movement cards, then watch the programs execute simultaneously, which frequently sends carefully planned robots crashing into hazards or into each other. Garfield, who later became far better known for designing the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering, created RoboRally in the years before that success, and the game has remained in print in various forms because of its distinctive combination of programming-style planning and chaotic, unpredictable execution.