Gremlins, Inc.

Gremlins, Inc. is a strategy board game for up to six players, set in a steampunk town inhabited by corrupt capitalist gremlins. You compete for money, political power and prestige by investing, stealing, extorting, bribing and arresting rivals. Play against AI bots or other people, with solo, multiplayer and team options.

The gremlins and their town

Gremlins are microscopic creatures that live inside mechanisms, including watches and telescopes. Their pocket-watch world contains places such as a bank, casino and jail. Gremlins pursue money and political power, as well as prestige earned through grand engineering projects, while trying to stop their competitors from achieving the same. They may bribe officials, mislead voters, steal from rivals or have them arrested.

The game has two playing fields: The Clockwork Town and The Clockwork Colony. Across them are 11 locations: the Office, the Plant, the Dump, the Marketplace, the Inferno, the Jail, the Casino, the Court, the Treasure, the Bank and the Astral Plane. Seven types of spots appear on the board: Risk, Gamble, Police, Income, Bribe, Misfortune and Tribune.

Cards and strategy

Each player holds six cards, drawing replacements from a shared deck. A card can either move you around the board or let you take an action, so you weigh where to go against what to do. There are 201 cards in the main deck, 171 of them unique, across four types: permanent, regular, secret and criminal. Combining cards can create new strategies.

You build resources and prepare for the endgame, then try to control your opponents’ progress by stealing, making arrests and starting conflicts. The resource system includes score, money, votes, malice, income and bribes, giving players ways to recover after being robbed or arrested. Forty events in the Misfortune deck can significantly affect the players’ standings, particularly when directed at a specific opponent.

Optional Chaos Cards and Character Abilities add further ways to shape a session. The six Chaos Cards are available to every player when enabled, while 12 sets of Character Abilities add mechanics tied to different character types. The playing fields and other optional settings also affect which strategies are viable.

Game modes

Sessions support up to six players, either in multiplayer or against AI bots. You can set a target score, a number of rounds or a time limit. The game offers custom sessions, ranked matches with rating-based matchmaking, and private sessions protected by a password; custom sessions let you set parameters and optionally filter who can join.

Solo play includes more than 10 challenges and custom sessions with adjustable settings and mixes of AI bots. Single-player games save and load automatically at each turn. In multiplayer, you can reconnect while a session is still in progress. A quick duel to 20 points with a fast timer can take under 20 minutes; a four-player session lasting 60 rounds can take two hours or more.

Teams and spectators

Team play supports 2x2, 3x3 and 2x2x2 matches, with teams made up of people, AI bots or both. Victory depends on communication and coordination as well as strategy. You can also watch other players’ sessions in spectator mode and communicate with players and fellow spectators using messages and emoticons.

Offline play

Gremlins, Inc. includes an online edition with single-player and multiplayer modes, and Gremlins vs Automatons, a separate edition for offline single-player. The offline edition works without a connection to the game’s server.

Items and session rewards

Some in-game actions can trigger random chest drops containing items of varying rarity, including emoticons, profile backgrounds and music tracks. Items can be used or traded on the Steam Community Market. You can also craft items from blueprints by spending charges, earned by converting unwanted or duplicate items. Cosmetic items do not affect the game mechanics.

Seasonal content

Seasonal updates add features, mechanics, cards, Misfortune events, music and themes. The game also includes regular tournaments, ranked leagues and ladders, with anonymous masks used in ranked sessions so players compete on equal terms.