ROVE Jr: Results-Oriented Versatile Explorer
ROVE Jr: Results-Oriented Versatile Explorer Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Overview
ROVE — short for Results-Oriented Versatile Explorer — is a sturdy robot often deployed to the far reaches of space. ROVE Jr. is a training course for a ROVE bot: a solo spatial puzzle game for 1 player, ages 6 and up, playing in about 15 minutes.
Components
- 4 Module cards (Brain, Widget, Gizmo, Servo), each showing an icon on one side and a one-time ability on the other
- 14 Mission cards, each showing a required pattern of the 4 Modules
- Movement cards
Setup
- Shuffle the 4 Module cards and place them in a square. They can be placed with the ability sides down for a basic game, or the ability sides showing for a more advanced game.
- Shuffle the remaining 14 cards Mission-side up to create the deck, then take the top card and place it nearby. This will be your first Mission. Each Mission requires that your 4 Modules are in a specific pattern.
- Draw a hand of 5 Movement cards (or fewer, for a harder challenge).
Taking Your Turn
Play cards from your hand to move ROVE's Modules around. Each time you play a Movement card, move one of the Modules shown on that card any number of spaces in a single direction: up, down, left, or right.
Modules can't overlap, and they must be edge-to-edge or corner-to-corner with each other at all times.
Keep playing cards until you get the Modules into the pattern shown on the current Mission card. Once you do, you've completed the Mission!
Completing a Mission
Place a new Mission card from the deck to complete, overlapping the previous one to create a panorama of your training adventure.
Draw back up to your hand size of 5 and see if you can complete this new Mission.
Winning and Losing
If at any time you aren't able to complete a Mission because you can't move the Modules you need, you lose the game.
If you can complete 7 Missions in a row, you win!
Advanced Variant: Module Abilities
Once you're comfortable with the basic game, you can reduce your hand size for a harder challenge, or introduce the abilities on each Module for a more advanced game. Each of these powerful effects can only be used once per game, but gives you all-new ways to navigate the training course.
- Brain: Move another module to be adjacent to this one.
- Widget: Move an adjacent module to any valid position.
- Gizmo: Discard entire hand (the rest of this ability's printed text could not be verified from any available source — see the Table of Contents note).
- Servo: Move this module to (the rest of this ability's printed text could not be verified from any available source — see the Table of Contents note).