BrainDodge.

Retro Science-fiction tabletop game · In Playtesting

Robot Prospectors and the Rings of Saturn

Mine Saturn's shifting rings, dodging eruptions and greedy competitors while managing your increasingly independent robots.

What could possibly go wrong?

There’s a fortune to be made mining Saturn’s rings, but extreme hazards of the job require a little mechanical help. Robot workers have learned to navigate, improvise, and judge risk without asking questions or waiting for orders. Now, as Saturn has become increasingly unstable, the robots have begun to reconsider their role in this arrangement...

Core mechanics

  • Five rotating rings change the board’s alignments every round
  • Robots explore, mine, build, and contest valuable sites
  • Eruptions from Saturn cause creative destruction and have unforeseen consequences
  • Hidden objectives accumulate as the robots develop self-awareness
Saturn ring location grid from the Robot Prospectors tabletop prototype, with a station orbit track above five rotating rings of twelve sectors each Robot Prospectors player mat for Task Force Ganymede, with mission freighter and shuttlecraft cargo slots and a neural network track for awareness, autonomy, and self-preservation
Current prototype materials: the Saturn ring location grid and a company player mat for tracking its mission freighter, shuttlecraft, radiation exposure, and robot consciousness.