Data

Data is a competitive abstract strategy game about cyber-warfare and data transfer. Two players race to upload their tokens from their offline Reserve to the Cloud. The game combines deterministic movement with calculated risk, played on a unique console board where coordinates are relative: your "A-1" is your opponent's "F-6." The Core Loop: Stream & Input The game is defined by a strict "Move-then-Roll" loop. Stream (Move): On every turn, you are forced to move. You pick one piece (even if it is part of a stack) and advance it 1 Step Forward. If you march into an enemy, you "Ram" them, crashing their piece back to their start while taking the square. If you march onto your own piece, you create a Stack. Input (Roll): After moving, if you still have data in your Reserve, you roll coordinate dice. This allows you to deploy new pieces or "Overwrite" the enemy. If you roll the coordinates of an enemy piece, it is a Critical Crash: their piece (or entire stack) is deleted from the board, and you instantly spawn your own piece in that square to replace them. Tactical Stacking You can stack tokens on a single square (by rolling that coordinate or moving onto yourself). However, bandwidth is limited: you can only move one piece off a stack at a time. Stacking allows you to buffer multiple units on a safe square, but beware—if a stack is crashed by the enemy, all pieces in it are reset to the start. The Reserve Mechanic The game features a dynamic pacing mechanic. When your Reserve is empty, you stop rolling dice and enter a high-speed "Upload Mode," moving purely by strategy. However, if an opponent crashes you, your pieces return to your Reserve, forcing you back into the slower "Loading Mode" where you must rely on dice to respawn. The first player to successfully upload all their data tokens to the cloud wins the race. —description from the designer