Adaptoid (2009)

Adaptoid is a board game for two players designed by Néstor Romeral Andrés in 2007. Each game lasts around 20 minutes.

An adaptoid is a creature that constantly evolves to adapt itself to its surroundings. To survive it needs to be fed. In adaptoid, two armies of adaptoids must confront one another with the aim of eliminating all opponents.

The game is played on a 37-space hexagonal board. Each player receives a supply of adaptoid bodies in either white or black which are plastic discs with laser-cut sockets ready to receive one of the small pile of claws and legs in the colour of each player. The capabilities of each of the adaptoids varies through the game depending on how many and what type of appendage are added.

Each player turn has 3 phases: Movement, Growth and Feeding. In the movement phase, the player may move one of their adaptoids as many spaces as it has limbs. Adaptoids cannot move through occupied spaces, but they can move on top of an opposing adaptoid to initiate a capture.

In the growth phase the player must either spawn a new, empty, adaptoid next to one of their existing pieces or add a leg or a claw to any adaptoid already on the board.

In the feeding phase, every enemy piece is checked for starvation. An adaptoid requires space to graze equal to its number of limbs. Any enemy piece which has fewer empty spaces around it than limbs starves to death and is removed. Starving your opponent to death (or indeed having them incautiously starve themselves) is worth a point.

The resolution of capture move is simple. The adaptoid with the most claws wins and the other adaptoid is removed from the board. If both pieces have the same number of claws, both are removed with a point going to each player. Starved or captured pieces are returned to the supply ready for further use.

The game ends when one player has either obtained 5 points by capturing and starving enemy adaptoids or has been completely eliminated from the board.