Infernal Contraption Review

Infernal Contraption

The theme of the game is that each player is a goblin-like creature called a Bodger who is trying to build a machine that will destroy the energy source of your opponents. A player’s energy source is his deck of cards. This is interesting because in order to more quickly deplete your opponent’s deck you must draw and play cards from your own deck, which of course brings you that much closer to losing as well. The game ends when all but one player has empty decks, with the last person standing being the winner.

At the start, each player receives a Power Core card, which provides the power to run their machine. Each player also receives an equal amount of random cards from the 120 card base of the game. Each player then draws seven cards to begin.

Each players Power Core is placed in front of them. On your turn you can play one or more cards to extend your machine. Each card is added to either side of the Power Source card on the main line, or sprouting vertically from a piece of the mainline.

Each card has two or four sockets on them. These sockets are one of five colors, and pieces of the machine can only be connected if the socket type matches. Placing the cards in the right place becomes vital in order to power up the cards to make your machine work effectively.

On your turn you can play one card onto your machine for free. If you want to add more than one card to your machine on your turn, you have to discard another card first.

After adding parts to your machine, it is then activated. Each card has a different effect that will usually take cards from an opponent’s deck or add cards to yours. When you turn your machine on, the cards are activated from left to right and top to bottom. So, a part on the left side of your machine will activate first, which may well affect cards further along your machine. This is what makes the game such fun, as you try to create a machine that will best affect your opponent to deplete his deck of cards before yours is depleted. As you cannot change the layout of your machine once it is built, good placement is essential throughout the game to make your machine work to its best.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward, add cards to your machine making sure your connectors match, then switching it on and see the effect it has. The cards and their affects are really quite clever and work very well together which is important in this kind of game.

Infernal Contraption is a simple game but has you having to make some quite agonizing decisions to get the best from your machine. Yes, you do have the luck of the draw, but there are multiple cards of each machine part so knowing when and where to play them makes this an excellent and fun game to play.

Review by Brian