Reiner Knizia’s Robot Master

James | Feb 19, 2010 Games

User rating:

(5 votes, average: 3.40 out of 5)

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Reiner Knizia and Conlan Rios are at it again with Robot Master. Unlike Reiner Knizia’s Monumental, Robot Master was actually based on a real life card game. Basically, that means the card game was good enough to port over to the iPhone and iPod Touch. I’m here to back that up and to even suggest that this version is superior to it’s predecessor. How could that be? Read on, my friends.

Robot Master is a puzzle/card game with several twists. You start out with a deck of cards numbered 0 to 5. You have six of each number and you proceed to lay these cards down one by one on a 5×5 grid. The totals for each row and column are added up as you go and are always displayed in their respective location. The first twist is that when you have two of the same number in the same row or column, the score of that number is doubled for that row or column. And when you have three of the same number, the score is increased by 100 points for that row or column. As you play, these individual scores seem to increase like crazy. This is where the final twist comes into play. Your final score is the row or column with the lowest score. Inevitably, one or two rows or columns will be neglected throughout the game so even if you have amazing scores for 9 of your rows and columns, your lowest score is what matters. This can be frustrating as well as addicting. Seeing some of the high scores for other people made me want to vomit. My highest score so far is a mere 41 points!

There are a few more game modes that give Robot Master loads more replayability. Easy mode allows you to skip one card per turn, giving you another chance for that perfect row. You are not able to post your scores online in this mode, though. Tournament mode is pretty much your standard game and you could end up on the high score table if you’re freaking awesome. Versus mode puts you up against either a friend or the computer. You take turns placing cards the same way you normally would except that one player is the rows and one player is columns. The lowest score on any of these loses the game. Pretty cool idea and drastically changes the game.

You probably still want to know why I think this version would be better than the original card game. Well, it’s because there would be way too much math in this game for my tastes. I like all my math behind the scenes where it belongs. Alright, so that’s kind of a lame reason but it’s all I’ve got. Reiner Knizia’s Robot Master has earned a permanent place on my phone and I suggest you check it out.