Worms inspired board game Rocket Cats has players shooting, shoving and slicing
Ready a holy hand grenade.
Wield an arsenal of weaponry against an enemy team in Rocket Cats, an upcoming board game directly inspired by the likes of Worms Armageddon and Scorched Earth.
In the party game, players will be working together in opposing teams of cats who have an enormous amount of artillery to hand, from rail guns to drone strikes, and must use their arsenals against their enemies. The aim of the game is to take out the other teams by steadily eliminating their cat units, whilst being sure to survive their enemies’ attacks - whichever team is left standing is named the winner.
Rocket Cats is a board game for one to 13 players that sees combattants drawing cards on their turn by drafting them amongst their teammates until everyone has a hand of five cards. Players then use their cards to create a series of actions that their character will perform that turn, with the order they’re placed in determining when they’ll happen. Every card has both a top and bottom half to it, with players needing to choose which half they want their cat to perform. However, every player’s series of cards must be placed facedown, meaning that their allies don’t know what they’ve chosen to do.
Once every player in the current team has chosen their series of action cards they take it in turns to flip over their cards, with each player flipping just one before the next player does. Actions are performed as cards are flipped over, meaning that players will need to anticipate their teammates moves when deciding on theirs. Whilst teams will have a chance to deliberate before they draw their cards, they cannot share information about what cards they have and what they intend to do with them.
Different items of weaponry will behave in different ways, with certain projectiles only following a straight line in the air - such as rocket launchers - whilst others can be fired in an arc over a piece of scenery. The trajectory of each projectile is tracked using dry erase markers on a white board, with players needing to be careful about where and how they use their chosen weapons to avoid misses or friendly fire.
Besides the main team mode, Rocket Cats can also be played in a free for all mode called Free-Fur-All - that has six to 13 players going against each other - or a defender mode for up two players that sees participants attempting to survive against a horde of AI controlled enemies.
Rocket Cats was created by Darren Terpstra, the designer behind a deckbuilding game called Ignite that has players controlling different species represented by miniatures in a duel to the death.
Ginger Snap Gaming is the studio responsible for releasing Rocket Cats, as well as the previously mentioned Ignite.
The Kickstarter campaign for Rocket Cats is live until November 9th, with a pledge of $45 (£33) getting backers a copy of the core game that’s estimated to arrive in December 2022.