In 2023 I learned of Andrew Looney’s old project: Icehouse Pyramids, now better known as Looney Pyramids.
In essence, the Pyramids are a rather quite versatile game system with well over 200 games made for them on BGG alone.
So I got a set, and liked the system enough to create a game.
What I ended up making was Agents of M.A.R.S.
The game in brief
Agents of M.A.R.S. is an hidden information abstract game, where the information that is hidden, is how many points a given colour will score.
At the start of the game, you take a pyramid in each colour and place them under opaque caps on the scoring objectives.
The scoring objectives are labelled 2, 1, 0, -1. Pyramids of the given colour have their score multiplied by that value.
Now, your opponent doesn’t know what colours you put where, and vice versa.
On your turn, you can do one of the following:
- Draw a pyramid from the bag and place it on the board
- Move a pyramid already on the board.
Optionally, before taking your turn, you can reveal and swap two of your objectives.
Once the board is full, both players reveal their objectives and count the scores.
The player with the highest score wins!
What You Need to Play This
Note that the exact listed colours here are irrelevant as long as they’re all different.
- Quite a lot of pyramids, 75 of them to be exact
- 5 Large, 5 Medium, 5 Small in Red
- 5 Large, 5 Medium, 5 Small in Yellow
- 5 Large, 5 Medium, 5 Small in Blue
- 5 Large, 5 Medium, 5 Small in Green
- 5 Large, 5 Medium, 5 Small in Black (must be opaque)
- An opaque bag
- A 7×8 board. You can buy one on The Game Crafter or just fashion one out of a chess board.
A note about the pyramids: I’m not legally allowed to sell them myself, they have to be sourced elsewhere (such as on https://store.looneylabs.com/).
That said, there are 3d print files and paper pyramids which you can make yourself available online.
Agents of M.A.R.S.: Objective Initiative is a small optional expansion for the core game, which adds a series of objective cards that can be drawn at the start of the game to guarantee that both players don’t have the same setup.
The expansion includes two decks of cards.
The only difference between these two decks is the colour scheme used for the cards.
They can be uniquely identified by their card backs.
Each deck consists of 24 cards for 24 different possible setups.
You’ll be able to buy the expansion on The Game Crafter once the page is published.
Print-and-Play files are also available (see below).
The Objective Initiative also comes with a brand new solo mode!
Introducing the AI Initiative. With the addition of two 8-sided dice, you can play the game solo. The AI receives an objective card, same as you, but all of its actions are driven by the roll of 2d8.
Can you beat the AI? Rules in the link below.
Links
- Rulebook
- BoardGameGeek Page
- Store page
- Looney Labs website: https://store.looneylabs.com/