Lexomatic 2020

You must issue commands for Lexomatic, a spy robot that has been dropped into the enemy base in order to steal secrets. However, due to various design faults and bugs in the operating system, controlling Lexomatic may not be as easy as you had hoped.

Lexomatic is a robot whose operating system accepts any word in the English language as a command word. Each letter in the word corresponds to a movement direction or an action (Activate electromagnetic shield; Open door; Grab item; Disable laser; Remove letter from buffer). Each turn you roll dice to add one or more random letters to the buffer. You then issue a command word that contains those letters in order, attempting to make Lexomatic negotiate the map, collect as many items as possible and escape intact. Finally, you resolve each letter in the command word. Invalid commands cause Lexomatic's temperature to increase, eventually leading to failure due to overheating.

The game includes an introductory mission, plus a campaign of 5 missions with new elements on each map and a small legacy element.

Designed for the 4th Roll & Write Game Design Contest.

—description from the designer