Gremlins Inc is a digital board game with a Steampunk vibe.. The game is always online, but there’s a separate offline version (Gremlins Vs Automatons). There’s Tutorial, Single-Player, Multiplayer modes.
Your aim is to gain Victory points represented as a Cog icon. Even when you gain the cogs, you can lose them. Games that have a target of 30 cogs take hours to get through.
Instead of dice, you move by playing a card. All cards have a pre-set dice icon. The cards always have some action that can only be played in certain squares. These cards sometimes have a monetary cost to play, especially the ones that gain Victory points. Some cards allow you to mess with your opponent, even remove their Victory points.
You can also gain Malice and Votes. After so many turns, someone is elected the Governor who gains a Cog, and has perks like not having to pay bribes on the police squares.
Generally, you move anti-clockwise around the board. The board has branching paths with many small loops. There’s 10 points of interest where you can play cards to gain Cogs.
When in Jail, you can gain Jail experience. You draw special cards and can still earn money so it’s not purely negative.
Many squares drain your resources. There’s a massive chance to lose money, be sent to jail or some other negative effect. It just feels like you are constantly being beaten down. You often have a target in mind, but you will rarely get there, or if you do get there, you won’t have enough money.
Here’s one example of how you are constantly beaten down. I left Jail and aimed for the Casino since I had a card that would give me a whopping 250 gold. I didn’t make it because an opponent landed on my square and sent me back to jail. After a few turns, I aim for the Casino again. After picking up the cash, I head to the next place where I can play a card for 5 cogs, but I went past a Misfortune space and lost some money so now I can’t afford it. Not to worry though, I can go to a different place for 2 cogs. It’s probably been 20 turns since I earned any score so I am quite relieved. 1 turn later, an opponent plays a card and steals my 2 cogs. Absolute raging.
From the games I played I only saw 1 board layout, but there may be more available. I wasn’t having too much fun but was annoyed when the developers pushed out an update without warning that wiped your save files - and I was in the middle of a game that I reckon had gone on for at least 1.5 hours. I wasn’t motivated to start more games.