Games: Ninja Alien Dino Racers on Mars

Overview

What are ninjas and dinosaurs doing on Mars, you might ask: Well, they were abducted by aliens with a gambling problem who like to host crazy races for the entertainment of the masses, of course!

NADROM is a racing board game reminiscent of "Mario Kart". Its creation was inspired by Brenda Brathwaite's "Challenges for Game Designers". After taking a long hiatus from it, I've recently come back to it and started reworking the whole game.

Main Design Challenges

• giving the player meaningful choices while keeping everybody else's down-time low in a turn-based game.
• Conveying a racing feeling in a turn-based game.

Main Features

• build your own race track: very flexible, modular system
• multiple lanes (inside, middle, outside) affect speed
• ramming mechanics
• lots of crazy power-ups such as alien abductions, banana skins, turbo chilis and hooligan lumberjack attacks
• avatar customization: every player chooses a mount and a rider, both of which have unique abilities/properties
• random events such as rain and animals crossing the track.

Core Mechanics

When it's their turn, the players roll 2d6 for points. They decide how many of the resulting points they want to spend on advancing and can accumulate the rest to pay for the use of power ups  (some of them can be used on an opponent's turn, which helps reduce player down-time) or special manoeuvres such as lane changes and ramming opponents.