Clockworker Backgammon Review: Looking Good Doesn’t Make for a Great Game – Spielpunkt.net

Clockworker was released in Japan in 2017, and has found its way to Europe and Germany thanks to Sylex and Asmodee. With its great visuals, the game also garnered a great deal of attention during SPIEL. Of course, good visuals must also be supported by good mechanics and an engaging long-term gaming experience. Our testing shows how well the game does this.

In an unspecified year of the third millennium, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by man’s advanced technology. Humanity left Earth and looked for a new planet to live on. Only the robots stayed behind.

After a few years, autonomous robots have found a way to survive on this devastated Earth and service the machines and factories left behind by humans.
Players send their bots to gather resources that can be used to claim artifacts and human records. In this way, all command points are accumulated. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game becomes the leader of the new robot era.

What does a devastated land look like?

The game is set up quickly. 16 different artifacts, some of which are duplicated when there are three or four players, are placed openly. Five shots are opened and the stack with the remaining shots placed underneath. The same applies to places. Locations give you resources while artifacts bring advantages in different situations.

They all begin with the starting position where they place four of the six available bots at the start. Depending on the number of people and the location in the round, each person gets between three and five gears at the start, which represent the currency in the game.

Blue, green, red and yellow resource cubes are placed next to the play area as a resource along with the remaining drive point tokens, gears and bots.

What do robots do when no one is looking?

Each turn consists of two phases. In the rescue phase, the top bot returns to each friendly location. This is how you get gears and resource cubes. In the action phase, you can perform any one of six possible actions. So you can retrieve another bot from a site and get more resources. You can also place new bots on the site. Slots are always filled from top to bottom. If you have at least six cards (locations or artifacts) in your screen, you can place bots in two locations.

In the beginning, everyone has the same starting position. Photo: Jonas Dahmen

With one of three other possible actions, you can buy a new gear location and populate it directly, repair artifacts or receive recordings. If none of the five possible actions mentioned so far are suitable, you can use two gears with the last option.

How to become a robot boss?

The game ends when one person has twelve cards in their bid or when the end piece from the draw pile is revealed. Depending on the number of people, this is placed in a certain position in the register stack during collection.

Now calculate all the driving points that you have collected during the game and add the points from the artifacts and recordings. Whoever collects the most points wins the game.

box info

Number of people: 2 to 4
Age: from 12 years old
Playing time: 45 to 60 minutes
Difficulty: medium
Long-term motivation: moderate
Type: Kennerspiel
Basic mechanics: hiring workers, building the engine

Author: Rickati
Design: Yustas S.
official website: clock factor
Release year: 2022
German language
Cost: 32 euros

conclusion

Unfortunately, there isn’t much behind the game’s interesting idea and cool visuals. The theme could have been implemented better. Just naming the individual resources would have helped here. However, it is one of the most positive aspects of the game. The illustrations and robot miniatures are beautiful and enhance the game very well. Only the quality of the miniatures could be better, as they are prone to bending in the ‘robot legs’ area.

This is what it might look like to a person during a match. Photo: Jonas Dahmen

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If you look at all the other components, the overall quality of the game’s textures is average. The starting player tag is useless as provided. Even if you paste it, it is not really stable. Even with the other permanent characters on the cut sheet. But does not happen in the game, there are the same problems. The cards are of good quality, as are the other resources and cartoon icons.

The rule book appears to be somewhat incomplete and would have needed more care when creating it. In the artifact overview 2 different artifacts are described with the same text, in the end result “electricity boxes” are mentioned which are not included in the game and in general the rulebook is simply not nice in terms of font and looks like a prototype before design Final. Font size and bold/italic are sometimes inconsistent.

Some of the symbols on the artifacts can only be understood by the general view. Especially as the game moves in complexity between a family game and a connoisseur’s game, the clearer icons or, better yet, texts would have been the most understandable option. Oddly enough, the costs of recordings and antiques are designed differently.

Despite all that, what’s really good is the mechanism. Deploying and deferring bots is a really cool mechanic. Engine building with locations and craft cards is also elegantly solved and allows for different strategies. Due to the short playing time, you have to keep an eye on the driving points from the start. Individual trains run smoothly one after another.

At least the cute artwork can convince the game. Photo: Jonas Dahmen

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During one game, the game can be really entertaining. However, since the same artifacts are displayed in each game and the recordings and locations show no fundamental differences, a good mechanism wears out very quickly due to a lack of variety.

This game is suitable for casual games, especially as an introduction to the field of expert games. Unfortunately, it quickly reaches its limits due to the problems mentioned and is not a really attractive game in the long run.

In a couple of forums on the game’s BoardGameGeek page, Sylex mentioned an expansion that appears to be in the works due to a lack of diversity in artifacts. Solo mode hasn’t been left out either.

Last Updated 12/15/2022 / Affiliate Links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API. * = affiliate links. Images from Amazon PA API