Drones and Droids: a strategy game with robots!

Aim

A thrilling collaborative strategy game about flying, roving and diving scientific robots - can you help make Drones and Droids a reality?

The game

Can your team of SAMS roboteers save the Hebrides from a harmful algal bloom?

Troubling reports arrive at the Scottish Association for Marine Science. The CalMac ferry MV Clansman has seen a cauldron of bright green water south of the island of Lismore. You and your crew of robot pilots are sent out on the research vessel Seòl Mara with the finest machines that SAMS can offer to find out what is feeding the algal bloom, whether it is dangerous, and to stop it from reaching the seafarms in Ardmucknish Bay.

Drones and Droids is a collaborative strategy game, where the rules teach the players how real-life scientific robots work. Through communication and careful planning, you can explore the ocean and discover clues to the source of the algal bloom – and more besides. The game has been crafted based on the experiences of scientists at SAMS and the way your robot pieces behave in the game is based on their real-world strengths and limitations. For example:

• The Selkie submarine can easily explore deep water but is restricted to moving in straight lines, because in real life this autonomous submarine can only get new direction orders when it comes to the surface.
• The Skater quadcopter flies fast and can take samples from the surface but burns through batteries quickly, so it has to return to the ship at the start of every turn.
• The Blusub ROV is tethered to the mothership, and can only move into spaces next to it, but is able to explore all the way to the seabed and even retrieve lost robots.

The Real Robots of SAMS

Some robots are riskier to pilot into the unknown than others, and the game’s narrative is shaped by a deck of event cards that act as your timer and add a tactical challenge to each player’s move.

Thanks to the random map and various calamities that can befall your team the game is different every time you play. But it always leads to a nail-biting climax where your team must devise a strategy to win before you run out of moves, using all the cunning and outrageous piloting stunts at your disposal.

The things you’ll need to learn to succeed in the game – from the way your robots work to the importance of planning ahead, from team camaraderie to adapting your strategy to the famously changeable Argyll weather – these things would help you on a real scientific robotic mission.

The normal version of the game takes roughly two hours to complete. However, it's been designed so that by removing cards marked with a special symbol it can be finished in the 45-minutes available to after-school STEM clubs.

We'll be creating some short videos about all sorts of aspects of the gameplay throughout the Crowdfunder run. So stay tuned to SAMS social accounts. 

What’s in the box?

The game consists of six robot tokens, the mothership piece RV Seol Mara, six data tokens, 108 playing cards and an extensive gameplay manual.  

Drones and Droids: Special crowdfunder edition (only 50 available)

This limited run first-edition will be made especially for crowdfunder backers. The box will be handmade here in the robotics lab at SAMS, and has an embossed 3D-printed box with a striking design, and an embossed map of our local ocean and a thankyou message on the back too. In addition, the special edition box has a crafty feature: a hatch under the map cards that you can remove to allow you to deal them from below, like a blackjack shoe.

It's made from the finest Polylactic Acid, a biopolymer that will dissolve if you bury the game in your garden for about a decade. Please be aware of this if you want to include Drones and Droids in a time capsule anticipating a future in which humanity has forgotten the secrets of marine science and robots have become myth.

The internal components in this image might change in appearance for the final launch, but this is our prototype, and gives you an idea of what you can expect from the special first-edition box:

Please note: Skater, video receiver and oscilloscope are not included.

Drones and Droids: standard edition

Slightly less special but no less useful for robotics education, the standard edition will be made in the UK by an external manufacturer. It will have a cardboard lid and no hatch, but other than that it will have exactly the same contents as the special edition.

The volume of this edition that we produce will be influenced by how many people donate to this crowdfunder. In the future, we intend it to be available from game shops in the UK to help bring income back to our charity, but we’ll deliver this to our backers well before it hits the shelves.

Drones and Droids: DIY edition

For broke robot jockeys with access to a 3D printer, we will send you the playing cards, along with a pdf of the manual, and .step files for the tokens and box that you can print yourself. This box will have a hatch!

Crowdfunder extras

We're also planning on something which will only be available for those who back the project through this crowdfunder: Six holographic cards in addition to the standard deck. These can be swapped in for the robots and/or ship that you’ll be controlling in the game with unique artwork, and you can use them to convert your favourite cutting-edge scientific robot into a wondrous creature.

Some people have difficulty seeing the imaginary grid that undergirds the mission area. The solution we have devised is the Mission Area Template (MAT), which can help supplement your pilots’ visualisation capability. It also looks nice. We intend to make this available to everyone who needs it rather than just crowdfunding backers though.

Please note: ImpYaks are also not included.

Who we are

The Scottish Association for Marine Science is an environmental and education charity based on the west coast of Scotland, and one of the oldest marine science organisations in the world. Our scientific work spans almost all marine disciplines, including oceanography, marine ecology and biology, biotechnology, and Arctic science. 

We’re trying to find solutions to some of the biggest environmental challenges facing humans today, including climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss, ensuring sustainable resources such as fuel and food, and microplastics pollution. 

The Scientific Robotics Academy (SRA) at SAMS launched last year and exists to be a bridge between the commercial, academic and educational spheres, collaborating and advancing the fluency and capability of robotics in Argyll and across the UK. The SRA has been funded by Argyll and Bute Council, through the UK Government's Shared Prosperity Fund, and it's how our robotics engineer Phil happened to end up at SAMS.

Drones and Droids: Origin Story

I’m Phil, the robotics engineer of the SRA. I spend my time supporting the research teams with various contraptions and I often visit schools to teach them about practical science and engineering, showing them that they don’t need to leave Argyll for the central belt to find rewarding work in this field.

One day my supervisor suggested the team come up with a role-playing game as a teaching aid. SAMS’ robots would be the characters and would be guided through a mission to discover something about the ocean.

Together we came up with a simple game, based on cards with robots, instruments and data, and tested it out at a school in Perth. Unfortunately, the game had a serious flaw – it needed someone who knew something of robots and science to lead it. Worse still, the students reported with characteristic honesty that it wasn’t very fun.

I took this away with me and reformulated the game into the Drones and Droids we have today. We’ve spent the last few months prototyping and playtesting with RookHart games in Oban and around the local schools, and the response from students and pro gamers has been very positive.

While we initially intended this game to be an educational tool, we now think it might have a broader appeal and could create a product which will bring steady income to the real robotics used at SAMS. This is why we've launched our crowdfunder.

Funding goals

We hope this crowdfunder will reflect the interest of the public (so far) for our unique robot game; providing us with some initial capital to be able to produce it, launch it, promote it, and get it in front of gamers and school students alike.

If we are able to raise £16,000, we’ll have enough money for an initial production run. From this, we'd be able to make the game available to selected schools in Argyll for free, promoting marine science and robotics for the next generation of scientists and technicians. We would also use some of the funding to cover expenses of promoting it - because we recognise we'll need to attend some events and conferences that SAMS wouldn't typically go to.

If we raise our stretch target of £40,000, we’ll astonish the SAMS directors and be able to increase the production run and the number of units we have available to sell (estimated RRP is £30 for the standard edition). The profits we would make from the game thereafter would be directed into the robotics work we do here, including:

• a huge ship avoidance system for the ImpYak, allowing it to intelligently navigate crowded marinas.
• a new device Phil's invented, which we will strap to an ImpYak and take up and down the waterways of Britain.
• a new quadcopter with a highly accurate positioning system and a multispectral near-infrared camera, letting us hunt microplastics from the air and take surveys of foliage near the shoreline.

The long-term aim

SAMS is a charity and survives on research grants, donations, selling scientific instruments that we develop, and by sharing our expertise in the marine environment. We’d benefit from being able to commercialise this game to a wide audience, bringing much needed funding to the real drones and droids of SAMS.

The money from this crowdfunder will go toward manufacturing standard copies of the game ready for worldwide sale. The profits from every unit sold will go straight back to our charity to further SAMS’ mission of creating a healthy ocean for thriving people.

We intend to soft launch Drones and Droids at Tabletop Scotland, 5-7 September; allowing avid gamers the opportunity to stroke a prototype, find out more, and (hopefully) back our Crowdfunder.

If this project is successful, backers should receive their rewards by Christmas 2025. The game will become available for purchase from SAMS online shop (and the café shop here at Dunstaffnage, if you happen to be in the area). We hope to make it available also through card game shops and museums, if possible.

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made