Smartbomb

I have become slightly obsessed with cocktail cabinets.

I think it’s because I’m planning on getting a place of my own, soon – my mind is reaching out for things to decorate my future house with. Really, a cocktail cab would probably be a bit too impractical for my living room, but that hasn’t stopped me thinking about them. Anyway, this game was inspired by Microsoft’s Surface, which emerged victorious from the cocktail cabinet battle royale I held in my mind recently. I wanted a simple, fun, multiplayer game that you could play with your friends over dinner.

You select the number of players, and each player is given a virtual control panel that can be dragged around the table to a comfortable position. A little car pops out of each control panel – with different colours corresponding to different players – and begins to drive around the open space, following a simple AI routine. The control panels contain some statistical information, such as the car’s remaining health, fuel and ammo, and a list of ‘desires’ that the player must prioritise. Desires – such as “Attack Red Player” or “Collect Ammo” – can be dragged up and down in a list of preference, which feeds into each car’s AI routine to establish its particular behaviour patterns. Cars drive themselves around the table, collecting power-ups, attacking each other, and treating physical objects (such as plates) and virtual panels as impassable obstacles, until the game is manually declared over. The winner is the player who scored the most kills.