Ricochet 2026

Ricochet plays out as a one-sided shootout on a dusty frontier lot. One player controls four cowboys picking their way across open ground, but they don't choose when or where to move — a gunslinger perched somewhere out of sight calls out who has to move next, then puts a bullet into the dirt the instant they stop. Every miss leaves its mark: a spent slug lodged in the ground that blocks a path or gives the next shot something to ricochet off of. The longer the standoff runs, the more the lot turns into a maze of bullet-scarred cover the gunslinger built by accident, one miss at a time.

Gameplay Each round has three beats. First, the gunslinger (P2) calls out which cowboy has to move — with one restriction: they can't call the same cowboy two turns running, so they can't just pin one unlucky cowboy down over and over. Second, that cowboy's controller (P1) moves them any distance in a straight line to open ground, trying to land somewhere that doesn't put any of the *other* cowboys in the gunslinger's sights. Third, the gunslinger fires from wherever that cowboy just landed — straight down any of the eight compass lines, and if the shot's blocked by a spent bullet from an earlier miss, it can ricochet once off that slug along a diagonal for a second chance at a hit. A miss always leaves a new obstacle behind, so the lot only ever gets more dangerous.

Winning The gunslinger wins by hitting three cowboys over the course of the standoff. The cowboys' side wins the opposite way: if the ones still standing end up completely boxed in — no cowboy able to make a single legal move — before three have been hit, play stops and they've survived the shootout.

—description from the publisher