Players also have a random selection of ability cards at their disposal, one of which can be used each turn. A second collision results in the piece being taken off the board to be reset to its starting point next turn, with the attacking player also gaining a bonus activation on a future turn. When players collide or a launcher shot misses the board, their opponent’s robot takes damage and flips their card to represent the damage. Players draw cards to activate two of their robots each turn (with a chance for the same robot to activate twice). The scenarios will last between half an hour and 40 minutes, Gomez said, with the ability to play with between two and four players split into two teams: the Iron Forest and the Animal Clans, which control mechs inspired by woodland fauna such as owls. This article has been updated to reflect this information. Update: Dicebreaker has been informed by its publisher that the player count for Iron Forest is from two to four players, it does not support up to eight players.
Examples given include racing to collect objective markers in the player’s colour by passing through doorways and dropping down holes, fighting to stay on the raised level longer than your opponent, or simply wiping your rival’s robots off the board by damaging them. The game will include seven different scenarios, each with a unique set of victory conditions and special rules. Like Ice Cool, the players must flick their teetering titans around a board made up of various rooms to complete objectives. The raised rooms have holes which pieces can fall through (deliberately or otherwise) to land back on the lower floor. Players can reach the raised level by loading one of their pieces into a launcher at the edge of the board instead of moving, before firing it up into the air - literally - to land on the second storey.
Iron Forest introduces an extra level to the dexterity challenge in more ways than one, with a second floor suspended above the board made up of modular rooms. In the game, players propel wobbly-bottomed penguins around the corridors of a frozen school in search of fish while avoiding a pursing hall monitor - also controlled by a player. Iron Forest is described as a brand new entry in the Ice Cool Universe, first seen in Brian Gomez’s hit 2016 family board game and its 2018 sequel-expansion. Finger-flicking dexterity game Ice Cool is getting a spin-off that swaps mischievous penguin students collecting fish for miniature robots doing battle in the future.