Most board games ask you to place workers or draft cards. Reactor Rescue asks you to wire up a working electronic circuit, with real LEDs and motors, before a two-minute timer runs out. It is one of the more unusual things crowdfunding right now, and the campaign is into its final days.
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Find events near youThe game is set in the floating city of Electra, where a meteoroid storm has knocked out a spacecraft and players take on the role of engineers racing to repair it. Each round, you have two minutes to build a functioning circuit using physical components. There are more than 100 circuit challenges across several difficulty levels, so it scales from absolute beginners to people who already know their resistors from their capacitors. It plays with 1 to 4 players, ages 10 and up.
Reactor Rescue comes from engineers Arta Shehu and Fiona Shehu, sisters who founded the company Labbox Education and have partnered with the educational toy maker Hape to bring it to market. The box is more science kit than most: alongside the cards and boards you get Labbox's modular electronic blocks, plus real LEDs, motors and sensors. There is a proper game wrapped around the wiring, too. You draft component cards, choose which difficulty of circuit to attempt, and race your rivals to bank enough repair tokens to fix the ship first.
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Start organising for freeThe Kickstarter launched on 21 April and has already passed its funding goal, with the campaign due to close on 21 May, so there are only a few days left to back it. If your group includes curious kids, teachers or anyone who fancies a game night that doubles as a crash course in electronics, it is worth a look before then.
Sources: PR Newswire | Big Boss Battle | Board Game Quest
