Bot Factory Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Bot Factory, a worker placement and tile laying game published by Eagle-Gryphon Games. Bot Factory seeks to take teh excellent gameplay from Kanban EV and distills it down to a simpler game.

Board gaming has matured over the last five years. The hobby is now at a point where it’s getting spin-offs of popular, heavier titles into more bite-sized, palatable experiences. One of the more popular titles that comes to mind is Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, the small-box, Target-appropriate version of its big brother, Gloomhaven.

In 2021, Eagle-Gryphon Games started this trend for themselves when they released Mercado de Lisboa, a board game based off of 2017’s Lisboa that featured about a third of the rules and a reduced level of complexity. This year, they continued this trend with Bot Factory, a smaller version of 2020’s Kanban EV. So what does it bring to the table, and how does it compare to its source material?

In Bot Factory, 1-4 players will be creating (ro)bots by collecting Project Tiles (blueprints), gathering parts, and assembling the bots together. Each Project Tile allows for the construction of exactly one bot of precisely one color, and each bot needs one head, one chest, and one set of legs to be assembled. Players will be constructing these bots until one of the four color types of bots is completely manufactured, or one player has five bots.

The way that players will be taking actions in the game is through a linear worker placement method that triggers sequentially when everyone has placed. At the start of a new round, from left to right based on where they took their action last turn, players will choose their new action spot. Then, once everyone has settled, the actions will trigger from left to right. To make the action selection even tighter, there’s an Administration Meeple named Sandra who will also be taking up spots and doing upkeep on her “turn”.

Finally, let’s talk about scoring. The fourth action type I’ve not alluded to yet is