Lightning & Bolt 2018

LIGHTNING & BOLT is an asymmetric, co-operative game built for parents and kids—or anyone who wants to mix together a lighter and heavier game for a great time.

LIGHTNING & BOLT is a dice-rolling, tile-flipping, bot-destroying search-and-rescue mission with superheroes, robots, and extreme asymmetry. To win, you need to rescue all 9 neighborhoods, fighting off the evil bots that are terrorizing them, reuniting friends and family, and cornering the Evil Doctor in his secret lab!

Game Play: Lightning always plays first. On her turn, she can move, smash DocBots on her location by rolling her die, and rescue neighborhoods she's cleared of bots. Lightning ALWAYS defeats all DocBots on her space, even if she rolls below the number of bots surrounding her. But, when she rolls low the extra DocBots make her trouble meter tick upward—one for each extra bot. Once her trouble meter is full, Lightning is trapped, and can't move until Bolt comes to rescue her!

Lightning rescues neighborhoods by flipping over tiles that have been cleared of DocBots. Once she flips over a neighborhood tile, it stays face-up until the next neighborhood is rescued. If the tiles match, they're safe, and remain up and clear of bots for the rest of the game! If they don't match, they both flip back face down, and moving back to fac edown tiles you've visited before brings a new batch of DocBots to fight.

On Bolt's turn, the giant robot rolls three dice, and assigns them to the actions described on its player mat. Some actions (like moving and searching a neighborhood) require 1 die assigned, regardless of value. Others (like attacking DocBots or rescuing Lightning from trouble) depend on the value rolled. If Bolt needs to increase the value of its roll, it can increase its heat by 1 per die re-rolled. But if Bolt's heat meter gets full, it overheats, and must spend all three dice on the following turn to cool down. Still, sometimes overheating is preferable to taking too much damage from being swarmed by DocBots in neighborhoods Bolt enters—bots Bolt doesn't defeat remain on its tile turn after turn, dealing continual damage and preventing it from moving or taking any actions until Lightning swoops in, destroys the bots, and spends a turn repairing her robotic friend.

If Bolt rolls a 6 on any of its dice, it can choose to assign that die to downloading an upgrade, drawing a card from its upgrade deck. On the following turn, dice can be assigned to that upgrade to activate it.

To win, Lightning & Bolt must match all four pairs of neighborhood tiles. But if at any point they reveal the Evil Doctor's lair, all unmatched tiles are shuffled, setting back our heroes badly! However, if all four matches are made, and the last tile flips up to reveal the Evil Doctor's lair, Lightning & Bolt have cornered him, and take him off to jail, saving Midtown once again!