Heboi Rumble

Heboi Rumble is the whole contest, in your browser, in about four minutes. It exists to teach the rules by making you break them.

You pick a chassis, a drive and a gimmick from a pile of junk. Everything has a Heboi rating — the worse the part, the bigger your score multiplier. There is one genuinely good component in the pile. Take it and you will find out exactly what a High-Tech Penalty feels like: six points a match, four matches, against a win worth ten.

Then you fight. One minute a round, the real rule set, a ring twice as wide as it is deep. Leave it and you lose. Tip over and you lose. Run the clock out having travelled less than your opponent and you lose. If your robot falls apart on its own in the first two seconds, a judge voids the match and replays it — twice, and then the result stands, however sad.

The fourth opponent is a brick. It has no motor, no wheels and no plan. It sits in the middle of a very small ring, and it is very hard to beat.

What we keep

Only the name you type into the leaderboard box. No account, no email, nothing that ties a run to a person unless you write your own name in it. See the privacy notice for how long that sticks around.

Then do it for real

The game is a rehearsal. Enter a robot and lose in person, which is considerably better.