Robot Quest Arena is a deck-building game of robot battles. Each player picks a team with an asymmetric bot to control and starts with the same basic set of cards.
In this robot battle game, players use these cards to move their bots, activate weapons, jump over (and maybe push other bots into) obstacles, and perhaps most importantly, buy new cards which give them more ways to maneuver, defend themselves, and damage their opponents.
Don’t worry, if you get knocked out you pop right back in and keep fighting next round. This is a game of points, not last bot standing.
Disclosure: Thank you to Wise Wizard Games for giving us a review copy of this robot battler. Some links in this post are affiliate links, using them costs you nothing extra and helps support our show. As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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Let the Robot Battles Begin!
Robot Quest Arena is a fast and furious deck building game of robot battles that comes from a partnership between Perfect Day Games and Wise Wizard Games. This two to four player conflict comes from the team of Robert Dougherty, CJ Moynihan, and Paul Waite.
Battles are hectic and over pretty quickly, with games of Robot Quest Arena taking about an hour tops, (and even quicker with less players). We couldn’t find an official recommended age for this game, but would say it’s very family friendly and likely great for kids, though there is reading involved so you can’t go too young.
Thematically Robot Quest Arena has a bit of a Pokémon vibe. You are kids on the island of Rivet who like to get together and battle your pet robots in an arena. Each team has a special ability but and it’s up to the players to decide how to best improve their bot through deckbuilding.
Players use energy to move and purchase new cards, move around the battlefield and push other bots (while taking full advantage of the variable terrain tiles). Bots will bash and shoot each other with an array of silly weapons, trying to knock out their opponents. Each point of damage done is a point for you, and don’t worry, if your bot goes down it re-spawns the next round.
The components in Robot Quest Arena are fantastic. This game features chonky plastic robots that remind me of Nintendo Amibos or Disney Infinity figures. They are full colour, look awesome, and are very solid. I have no worry about these breaking even with extensive play.
You also get a very clear board with labelled spots to store all the different cards and tokens, though the board is a bit big. The card art is great, the iconography is excellent, and the card text is clear and unambiguous. The rulebook is clear and concise.
If I had to complain about anything component wise it would be the size of the game board. While it’s not ridiculous, I think I would have preferred a board with just the arena. That way players can arrange the rest of the stuff however they want and optimise their play space.
Battling Robots, how Robot Quest Arena Plays
Start a game of Robot Quest Arena by placing out the board and filling it with cards. Shuffle the shop deck and create an initial six card market, and place the deck on it’s spot. Place the Advanced Battery, Heavy Hammer and Rivet Gun cards at the bottom of the shop (these cards are always available to purchase).
Use the included game tiles to set up the arena according to the rulebook or however you wish, making sure to include enough spawn points for your player count. Because players get to choose where they spawn, making it fair and symmetrical isn’t really necessary. Make piles of health makers at the bottom of the arena (the amount of blue cubes will be based on your player count but include all of the red cubes).
Everyone chooses which team to play and takes the the matching player board and robot. Keep the bot off the board for now but fill in the health spot on your player board with one blue cube followed by a number of red cubes until your total matches the number of wrenches shown for your bot.
Each player gets a starter deck of ten cards including eight Batteries, one Hammer and one Jump Jets card. These get shuffled and everyone draws five cards. Any left over starter cards are returned to the box. You can tell these apart from the market cards because they don’t have a cost on them.
Play goes around the table clockwise. At the start of your turn, if your bot isn’t in the arena, refill their health from the cubes at the bottom of the board and place your robot onto an empty spawn point of your choice.
After spawning, if necessary, you then play cards to do things. You can play any of your cards in any order. However, you can’t hold any cards in your hand between turns, so you are going to want to play everything you have every turn. Things like energy and movement points build up as you play cards but also don’t carry over.
Movement is orthogonal and is blocked by obstacles and other robots. Some cards provide movement points directly, but you can also convert energy to movement points. It costs one moment point to move one spot. When moving you can also push another bot for a cost of two movement points. If you push that bot into something it takes one damage and if you manage to push two bots into each other they each take one damage.
You will need energy to move, but you will also want to use it to buy new cards. Each card in the shop has an energy cost and bought cards are added to your discard pile. Robot Quest Arena includes a wide range of cards including ways to heal and purge your deck, a variety of new ways to move, energy generation, and of course, a slew of silly weapons.
Weapons come in two types, melee or ranged. Range is counted as square rings radiating out from your bot, while Melee weapons only work on orthogonally adjacent targets. Line of sight is required for most ranged weapons and this is calculated from the centre of your square to the centre of the target’s square. Bots and obstacles block line of sight.
To make things interesting the arena can be filled with a variety of different tiles. There are walls that act as obstacles, computer terminals that let you draw and discard cards, a scrap heap that lets you purge cards from your deck, a potentially deadly trash compactor, and more.
You can earn victory points by being in the middle nine squares of the board at the start of the turn. Plus every time you damage an opponent you collect their health tokens as victory points. Red cubes are worth one point each but the blue cubes, which are only awarded when you KO an opponent, are worth two. There are also some cards in the market that award victory points when played.
Remember how each time you respawn you refill your health? Well the game ends as soon as someone goes to respawn and there are no more blue cubes left. At that point everyone counts up the cubes they’ve collected and the player with the most points wins.
Robot Quest Arena is a deck-building card game and that means it features exception based rules where the cards can override anything I’ve written above. For example, Jump Jets let you move over obstacles or other bots, while Omniwheels let you move diagonally, and laser cards shoot through things and don’t require line of sight, etc.
In addition each team’s robot has a unique ability. For example Crate, the blue bot, costs an extra movement point to push and they have more health, while Petri, the green bot, gets a bonus red cube and gets to draw a card when knocking another bot out.
When playing Robot Quest Arena with only two players, each player controls two robots with one single personal deck. For each card played you decide which robot it affects, with your energy and move shared between the two.
There are also rules for team play where every time your teammate loses health you also lose one victory point and it’s the team with the most points between both members that wins the match.
Robot Quest Arena Review: This robot battle game packs a big punch
The first thing you can’t help but notice about Robot Quest Arena is just how striking this game is. It has fantastic table presence. A big part of this is the big plastic, full colour, pre-miniatures, but that’s not all. It’s also the overall bright, somewhat cartoonish, graphic design of the entire game. This includes the icons, the colours used, and the look of the character art. There is just something inviting about this game.
The next highlight for me is just how quick the game plays and how much back and forth there is in a match. When I first heard of this new robot battle deck-building game, Robot Quest Arena, I assumed it was a programmed movement game, something like Robo Rally (one of my favourite games of all time). Having now played the game I can say that this is very much not Robot Rally. Instead Robot Quest Arena is a fast and furious, rather chaotic, robot battle.
This is a game that feels like Super Smash Bros. with bots moving all over the map, getting knocked out left and right, only to re-spawn and come back and knock someone out themselves. There are a lot of KOs in this game, and once people have started to get some of the more expensive weapon upgrades, there are a lot of one shot kills.
When playing Robot Quest Arena you quickly learn to get over any concern about being knocked out, and instead just try to do more damage on your way to the scrapyard. This isn’t a game that rewards playing defensively. It’s all about hitting the other bots and earning those cubes.
The length of a single Robot Quest Arena battle seems just about perfect to me. Our games always seem to end right when you’ve picked up a few very cool expensive cards and gotten to use them once or twice. I think if the game went any longer the thrill of upgrading would be lost and your decks would start to feel bloated. That said that if you do want a longer game you could always use more blue cubes or have players trade in their blues for reds. Similarly, if the game feels too long, you can just play with less blue cubes in the pool.
I also find the game weight to be great. I really dig how simple the mechanics are in Robot Quest Arena. You use energy to move or buy cards, use weapons to hurt each other, and use the terrain to your advantage. There’s no worry about turning left and right or chain reactions or complicated timing rules that you sometimes find in other skirmish games. This makes the game very accessible and also family friendly.
Note that saying the game is simple doesn’t mean the game is lacking anything. The range of cards and ways, the way you use them, and how you can combine them, rewards players taking the game seriously. Players who learn and know the deck will have a bit of an advantage and playing tactically is rewarded. It’s just that you can also have fun by just buying the most expensive card each time and just hitting the closest bot with whatever you have.
I already mentioned the board size in Robot Quest Arena as a minor complaint. I wish the market board was a separate piece, so that you could place it wherever you want. Also, we never actually use the marked spot on the board to store the health cubes, preferring to use wooden bowls (like we talk about in our What are some must have tabletop gaming accessories? article).
You all know I love asymmetry and this game is good for that. Each robot is unique, and everyones build is going to be completely different based on what cards are in the market. A nice to have for me would have been to have each kid be unique too. As it stands, each team is a pair of hero and bot. I think the game would have been much cooler if each hero had an ability too and you could mix and match, picking both which kid to play and which bot they would use.
I think a good indication of how much we’ve been enjoying Robot Quest Arena, is the fact that it got played three times in a row the first time I brought it out and by the night we all went online to see what expansions there were. Right from that first game, I immediately wanted more, which means Wise Wizard must be doing something right here.
As of right now there are a number of bot expansions available for Robot Quest Arena, with more coming later this year. Each new bot comes with a new team, a new mini, more health cubes, new map tiles, new rules and new cards supporting those rules. The new rules include new card types like shields, upgrades, and events.
Since our first play Robot Quest Arena has hit our table a number of times. Perhaps more importantly, it’s been a huge hit at our local public play events. There’s one local group of gamers who plays it every month at our Walkersville Brewery Brews & Board Games, game nights. It’s something they look forward to and enjoy each event. Heck, they have even played with an expansion I haven’t tried yet.
Robot Quest Arena is a great mash up of arena battle game and deck-building card game. It looks fantastic and they’ve made a cool universe for the background story that I can see expanding to other games. This is a great family game that older kids can enjoy on their own, but also a ton of fun for a group of deck building pros.
If you are looking for a miniature skirmish game that gives you the fast and furious and rather silly feel of games like Super Smash Bros. this should be a great game for you. As a nice bonus there’s no painting or assembly required for the minis or the terrain.
If you are a deck-building fan you should also check this game out. It’s using the mechanics you love to do something new and interesting. Robot Quest Arena evokes a different feel from most other deck-building card games while holding to a familiar mechanic.
Now if you are looking for something like Mechs Vs Minions or Robo Rally but with deck-building this isn’t quite that.
Despite being card driven, you don’t really get that programmed movement feel at all. There’s no worrying about being pushed off your planned route and while there’s some fun stuff on the board it’s not really a puzzle to be solved. That said it is highly possible you will still enjoy this game, I know I did, just be aware of what you are sitting down to play.
Robot Quest Arena is currently available on Amazon, direct from Wise Wizard Games, and you should be able to pick it up from your FLGS.
FAQs
Can you play Robot Quest Arena solo?
There are currently no solo rules available for Robot Quest Arena.
Is Robot Quest Arena a Programmed Movement game like Robo Rally or Mechs Vs. Minions?
No. Despite similar themes for these games, there’s no programmed movement in Robot Quest Arena. You move your bot as you play cards and you complete all of your actions before the next player goes.
Do you need the expansions to enjoy Robot Quest Arena?
You don’t need the expansions to enjoy Robot Quest Area with two to four players. It’s fun as it is. If your group is larger each new bot does add one to the player count. Also, each expansion expands the game with new rules, so while you don’t need them, you are probably going to want them.
The battle is over. The crowd is heading out of the arena and it’s time we wrap up this Robot Quest Arena review.
I’m a big fan of deck-building as a mechanic, going all the way back to the Starcraft The Board Game. It’s great to see people still innovating and doing new things with cards. What’s your favourite deck-builder? I would love to hear about it in the comments.
- Robot Quest Arena is an exciting deck-building board game.
- 2-4 Players will battle it out to become the best Robot Tech in the world!
- Craft your deck to control, protect and upgrade your bot as you fight to knock out competitors in the arena.
