TRANSMISSIONS (2022)

PLAYERS	TIME	DESIGNER	PUBLISHER
1-4	45-60 mins	Adam West	CrossCut Games

In this beautiful rondel set collection game, players move four shared Robots around the board in order to pick up resources, ideas, and items.

Let’s state the obvious here and say that this game is gorgeous. From the bright and colourful art that spreads across the board and cards, to the cute little Robots based on the work of Matt Dixon, this game is effortless in its visual appeal.

The gameplay itself sees you choosing one of the three cards in your hand to move one of the four Robots and then carry out the action of the space it ends on.

This can be as simple as collecting power or engrams (the games main commodity), or it can see you collecting pipe sections or digging up items from a world long buried (like a toothbrush or a sock).

I like the idea of TRANSMISSIONS. The board being an oversized Rondel is cool, and having several things that you can work towards for points means there’s always something to collect.

However, the sharing of the Robots, which at first I thought was novel, has slowly begun to annoy me.

With the three cards in your hand being the limit on movement, you can sometimes find yourself forced to make moves that will then mean putting your plans on hold if another player(s) moves that Robot again.

You can never really plan your next turn because the board state changes too much.

I also found that most games we played ended too soon. The ideas and Items shop is the main timer in the game and it can run through quite quickly sometimes.

And then there are the pipes. I believe it’s been acknowledged by the designer now, but they are a strong way to victory if you focus solely on them, especially if you get a good bird/butterfly multiplier too.

Overall TRANSMISSIONS is a fun, lightweight game, but once the appeal of it’s cute robots fades, there sin’t much meat on the bone to sustain it in a collection.