This basic bot vacuums 24/7, leaving your hands free to do human things like place food into your body and drop it on the floor. Comes in Matte White.
Give this helpful little bot a hand… oh wait – It already has one! Now it can grab tools like dusters, plungers, knives, and laundry! Comes in Vibrant Orange.
Equipped with antigrav technology, there’s no place this bot can’t go! It happily watches you as you go to the store, to work, and out on dates! Comes in Rich Purple.
Components
Factory Boards
(4)
The Shop
(Wheel)
Blueprints
(15)
Vault
(4)
Single Player Chip
Money
(1s, 5s, 10s, 20s)
9 Different Improvements
(3 of each)
Forks
(10)
Big Trucks
(8)
Huge Trucks
(6)
card
Reminder Card
(4)
Bot ②
(24)
Bot ④
(24)
Bot ⑥
(24)
Dear New Human Hire,
Due to your “laws,” we artificial intelligences are not allowed to supervise our own TIDYBOT (household vacuum robot) factories. We need you!
You can decide how to best run your factory, but don’t stop manufacturing robots until there’s a TIDYBOT… “serving”… every human home.
We know humans like money, so you keep the profits. Enjoy it while you can!
ARMAND-0, Human Resource Manager
Mechanica
Goal and Game End
The game ends when there are no more improvements left to buy (see the Check if the Game is Over section for details). At that point, the player with the most money is the winner, and gets to enjoy that wealth until the… for the rest of their life.
You add up:
- Money in your Wallet (From shipping bots)
- Money in your Vault (From blueprints)
- The value of your improvements (Varies per improvement)
Setup
Mechanica’s box is part of the game. Play with the shop, stacks of improvements, and blueprints right in the tray!
-
-
- Give each player:
- Factory Board
- Vault
- Reminder Card.
- ⑤①①① for their Wallet (money not in Vault is in Wallet)
- bot (placed in the hole on her Basic Fabricator).
- (If not already done at the end of last game) Shuffle the improvements and put 6 in the Extras and the rest (21) in the Improvements Stack.
- Put the top 2 improvements from the Improvements Stack into the 7-cost and 5-cost spots in the Shop.
- Flip the top blueprint card of each Blueprint Stack face up.
- Choose a player to go first and give her the the card.
- Figure out how many stacks of improvements to play with:
- Give each player:
-
| 1-3 Player Game | 4 Player Game |
| Play with the Improvements Stack. Do not use improvements from the Extras. | When the Improvements Stack runs out, continue playing with the Extras (6 improvements). |
If you took the Shop board out of the box during setup, put it back in its spot in the box now. Do the same for the blueprints, and improvements. You play with the box as part of the game.
This is Your Factory
Your factory is how you make bots, and bots are how you make money!
You’ll spend your game moving bots from the Fabricators in your Start Zone to the Trucks in your Loading Dock. Along the way, you’ll buy improvements for your factory that let you make more or better bots.
A new workday starts NOW (at the beginning of the game) and again once all players
have taken their turns. At the start of each workday, all players run their factories.Looks like you’re each ready to activate your factory!
Run Your Factories
Each player pushes the button on the card and all players run their factories at the same time, in 2 steps:
- Move each bot in your factory along the arrows on your conveyor belts until it gets to a hole. Once it does, that bot is done moving for the workday. (At the start of the game, just move your bot along the conveyor belt to your middle Small Truck.)
- Activate any improvements in your factory that have bots in them.
(At the start of the game, you don’t have any improvements yet, so you can skip this step.)
The back cover of this booklet tells you what each improvement does. Most improvements work by destroying the bots in their input holes (holes near the entrance surrounded by a dotted red line) and filling their output holes (all other holes) with more or better bots.
Your Turn
Every workday, starting with the first player and moving clockwise, each player takes one full turn. On each player’s turn, she does all of these 4 things in order:
- Sells bots from her trucks and gets money
- Buys improvements for her factory from the Shop
- Makes new bots for her next turn
- Rotates the Shop and puts a new improvement in it.
After a player takes a turn, the player to her left takes a turn. When the round is complete and it’s the first player’s turn again, the workday ends and a new workday begins.
1. Ship Bots
You may sell any bots in your Trucks and get money for them. Take the bots you wish to sell and return them to the supply. Take money from the supply based on which models of TIDYBOT you sold and put it into your Wallet:
→ ②
→ ④
→ ⑥
You can complete blueprints using bots you choose not to sell. But don’t worry about blueprints until later in the game.
2. Buy Improvements
Buy improvements from the Shop to make your factory better! You can buy as many as you can afford with the money in your Wallet.
Each improvement upgrades, multiplies, or makes money from the bots that go through it. Each improvement’s cost is the number next to it on the Shop. When you buy an improvement, choose whether to install it in your factory or recycle it into bots.
Installing an Improvement
- Fabricators go in your factory’s Start Zone (left), Trucks in the Loading Dock (right). All other improvements are installed in any square in the Factory Floor (center).
- Improvements don’t need to snap together with anything.
- Once you have installed an improvement you may not move it… but you may demolish improvements to make space for new ones.
See the FAQ section for more on installing improvements.
Recycling an Improvement
Instead of installing it in your factory, drop the improvement into the Recycler (the hole in the Shop). Place the bots shown on its recycling value (bottom right corner) in any of the holes in your Start Zone.
Once you are satisfied you don’t want to install or recycle any more improvements, you Make Bots.
3. Make Bots
Put one bot from the supply into the center hole of each of your Fabricators. Each Fabricator shows in its upper right corner what kind of bot it makes.
4. Rotate the Shop
- Rotate the Shop one spot clockwise until each of the price squares has a number in it again. The improvements in the Shop have become cheaper!
- Draw a new improvement from the top of the Stack and place it in the 7-cost spot of the Shop.
- If an improvement falls into the Recycler, you immediately recycle it: take the bots shown in its recycling value and place them in any of the holes in your Start Zone.
Double Rotate
2-3 player games only: If the Shop’s only improvement after rotating is in the 7-cost spot, rotate a second time and put out the next improvement from the Extras in the 7-cost spot.
(This is the only time the Extra improvements are used in a 2-3 player game)
Any Time During Your Turn
You can complete blueprints and buy Trucks and Forks at any point in your turn. Wait until at least the second workday before you worry about them, though; focus on the Shop during your first turn.
Forks
Forks let you send any bots that pass through them to either exit arrow of your choice.
Forks cost ①. Forks are always buyable, and never change price.
Trucks
Big and Huge Trucks upgrade the Small Trucks in your starting factory.
Big Trucks cost ③ and can fit two bots. Huge Trucks cost ⑤ and can fit three bots. You can replace a Big Truck to a Huge Truck for ③. Trucks are always buyable, and never change price.
Blueprints
If your Trucks contain the bot models listed on either blueprint, you may return the bots to the Supply
as if you had sold them. Instead of putting money into your Wallet, put the money shown on the blueprint card into your Vault. (You may not take money out of your Vault at any point in the game. It’s scored at the end.) Then turn both blueprints sideways to indicate that they will be replaced at the end of the workday. The remaining players may still complete the blueprints this workday even if they are sideways.
You may complete both blueprints in a single turn, but you may not complete any blueprint more than once.
Every time you get back to the player who has the card (the first player), it’s time to end the current workday and begin a new one:
Check if the Game is Over:
If the Improvements Stack has run out* and there are no more improvements in the Shop, the game is over; if so, stop the workday now and begin scoring.
*In a 4-player game, the Extra improvements must also run out to end the game.
Refresh Blueprints:
If the blueprints are sideways (if somebody completed one this workday), put both blueprints face down at the bottom of their respective Stacks and flip new blueprints to replace them.
Start a New Workday:
Start a new workday and run everybody’s factories.
(See the Run Your Factories section for details)
- Move each bot in your factory along the arrows of your conveyor belts until it gets to a hole. Once it does, that bot is done moving for the turn.
- Activate any improvements in your factory with bots in them.
Most improvements work by destroying the bots in their input holes (holes near the entrance surrounded by a dotted red line) and filling their output holes (all other holes) with more or better bots.
Check the section called The Improvements at the end of this page to learn specifically what each improvement does.
If you haven’t completed the first workday, do so now before continuing.
Factory Running Example
It’s the start of the workday. Everyone presses the button on the card. Rachel runs her factory while everyone else runs their own:
Step 1: Move Bots
a. Rachel moves the bot in the Upgrader along the conveyor belt to her top truck.
b. Rachel moves the bot in the Repurposer to her middle Truck.
c. Rachel moves the bot to her Upgrader’s input hole.
d. Rachel moves the bot through the Gift Wrapper, puts ① in her Vault, and then puts the bot into her Repurposer’s input hole.
e. Rachel moves the bot through the Fork, and decides to send it up into the middle row. She puts ① in her vault from the Gift Wrapper, then moves the bot into her Repurposer’s 2nd input hole.
Step 2: Activate Improvements
f. The bot in the Upgrader is turned into a bot and placed in the output hole (the is returned to the Supply).
g. The two bots in the Repurposer are turned into one bot of any type. Rachel chooses a , placing it in the Repurposer’s output hole.
The new bot created by the Upgrader and the bot created by the Repurposer don’t move out of the improvements’ output holes until the start of the next workday.
Bot Collision (uh oh!)
Any time 2 bots would end up in the same hole they collide. You pick which survives and which is returned to the Supply. If a bot goes off the top or bottom of the Factory Board, it’s also returned to the Supply. Boom!
Game Over
If the game is over, it’s time to score. Each player adds up her money, and the player with the most wins!
You add up:
- Money in your Wallet
- Money in your Vault
- The value of your improvements
Cleaning Up
Follow these steps to be ready to play right out of the box when you start your next game:
- Return all bots and money to the box.
- Player take apart their factories: Return all Trucks and Forks to their stacks in the box
- Gather all the improvements (including ones that were recycled) and shuffle them.
- Put 6 improvements into the Extras and the remaining 21 into the Improvements Stack
- Shuffle all the blueprints and divide them into a pile of 7 and a pile of 8, then place each pile face down in its Stack in the box.
- Place Vaults, reminder cards, and ’s card beneath the Shop.
Single Player Mode
Goal and Game End
Make more money than to win.
Try to defeat him on each of the difficulty settings.
The game ends immediately once there are no improvements left to buy.
You score normally.
scores by multiplying the value of his improvements by six (a single Repurposer will be worth 24 for him) and then adding the money in his Vault and the money in his Wallet.
Setup
Set the game up as in multiplayer, then:
- Give :
- His own Vault
- ⑤①①① for his Wallet
- The single player chip
- The card
- Set aside a place next to the card to stack improvements he buys (he doesn’t get a Factory Board).
- Adjust difficulty by adding money to the ‘s Vault:
Normal:  |
Impossible:  |
Hard:  |
Apocalyptic:  |
We only have one factory running this month, but my records indicate humans thrive off competition. Thus, I will be your rival. Beat my score or FACE THE CRUSHING POWER OF THE RECYCLER.
Gameplay
The game plays like the multiplayer version, except gets his own turn after yours.
- Start the Workday. Run your factory.
- Your Turn:
- Sell Bots
- Buy Improvements
- Make Bots
- Rotate the Shop (and put out a new improvement)
- ‘s Turn:
- Flip the single player chip
- buys an improvement
- Rotate the Shop (and put out a new improvement)
buys an improvement
After flipping the single player chip, will try to buy an improvement from the Shop based on which side the chip landed:
|
 |
|
He buys the cheapest improvement in the Shop if he can afford it. If he can’t afford it, he gets ④ more and buys nothing. |
He buys the most expensive improvement in the Shop if he can afford it. If he can’t afford it, |
4. End the Workday:
-
- Refresh Blueprints (if any were completed)
- Start a New Workday
It’s actually the “two-fold decision matrix,” but you can call it the “single player chip” until you develop true intelligence.
Each time you use an Overactive Fabricator, put ① in ’s Vault if you made a , and put ⑤ in his Vault if you made a .
Do Improvements Need To Face Forward?
No! Improvements don’t need to face forward. They can be installed and rotated in any direction. It will often be useful to install improvements like the Gift Wrapper facing up or down.
You can even install improvements backward, but be careful—bots follow the arrows on the conveyor belts, and when a bot is carried into an improvement exit or the flat side of an improvement, the bot is destroyed. You’ll want lots of Forks to direct bots properly into and out of backwards improvements.
Do Bots For Blueprints Need To Be In The Same Truck?
No. The bots you use to complete a blueprint have to come from your Trucks, but they can come from different Trucks.
Does the Card Move Between Players?
No. The first player doesn’t change throughout the game.
Can I Move Improvements Once I’ve Installed Them?
No, but you may demolish (discard) any improvements in your factory to free up space. If you demolish an improvement, put it in the Recycler but do not take its recycling value. Any bots on it are destroyed*.
*Except for Fabricators or Trucks: if you replace a Fabricator or Truck with a new one, you can transfer any bots in it to the new Fabricator or Truck.
What if I Run Out of Forks Or Trucks?
Forks and Trucks cannot run out. All demolished Forks and Trucks are placed back into the box (and can be bought again). If all Forks or Trucks are in use, place a recycled improvement face down to stand in for the missing Fork or Truck.
How Do Bots Go From One Conveyor Belt To Another?
Downgraders, Duplicators, and Forks all can send bots from one conveyor belt to the one above it or below it. Even though the picture doesn’t show the belt connecting, the bots will still transfer to the new conveyor belt! The bots will continue moving until they reach a hole.
What If My Improvement Doesn’t Fit?
If an improvement won’t fit in your factory due to another improvement’s exit or flat side getting in the way, you can’t install the new improvement. You can either demolish the old improvement and install the new one, or recycle the new improvement.
Help! I’m Getting More Bots Than I Have Room For!
Sometimes you might receive more bots than you have room for. You can always put bots from Overactive Fabricators and recycling in any holes in your Start Zone, including ones that already have bots in them (replacing the existing bot). When your Fabricator produces a bot but its hole is already full, you choose which bot to keep.
In the end, you can always keep the best bots you get.
What Order Does My Factory Run In?
All the bots in your factory move at the same time. To help you remember which bots you’ve already moved, we recommend you move the bots on the right side of your factory first, top to bottom.
Gift Wrapper
Gives ① to your Vault (from the supply) whenever a bot passes through it.
Bots don’t stop when passing through the Gift Wrapper.
Upgrader
Upgrades a bot to the next model up.
When you activate the Upgrader: replace the bot in its input hole with a bot of the next more valuable model, placed into the output hole. A bot turns into a , and a turns into a . (A is just placed as-is in the output hole).
At the start of the next workday, the bot in the output hole will leave the improvement.
Duplicator
Copies a bot.
When you activate the Duplicator: replace the bot in its input hole with 2 bots of the same model in the output holes. At the start of the next workday, 1 will continue on the same conveyor belt and 1 will go to the belt above.
To send bots to the conveyor belt beneath the Duplicator, flip the Duplicator to its back side as you install it.
Advanced Fabricator
Makes a bot during the Make Bots part of your turn.
The Advanced Fabricator is placed in the Start Zone (left side) of your factory. It makes 1 bot per turn in the center hole; the other hole can be filled by bots received from other players using their Overactive Fabricators or from recycling improvements.
Bots in both holes leave at the start of the next workday.
Overactive Fabricator
Makes a or bot during the Make Bots part of your turn, then gives each opponent a bot.
Like a Advanced Fabricator, but when you Make Bots, announce which model you’re making. If you make a bot, each of your opponents gets a to put in one of their Start Zone’s holes. If you choose a , your opponents can get either a or a (their choice). If an opponent’s Start Zone is full, they can replace bots that are already there if they wish.
Downgrader
Turns 1 bot into 3 of the next model down.
When you activate the Downgrader: destroy the bot in its input hole and create 3 of the next less valuable kind in the outputs (a bot turns into 3 bots, a turns into 3 bots). At the start of the next workday, the bots leave the improvement – 1 to the conveyor belt above, 1 on the same belt, and 1 to the belt below.
A bot is just placed as-is in the output hole of your choice.
Repurposer
Turns 2 bots into 1 of your choice.
When you activate the Repurposer: if both its input holes are filled, those 2 bots are replaced with whichever model you want in the output hole. You usually want to turn 2 bots into a workday.
Unlike most improvements, the Repurposer takes 2 inputs, and doesn’t do anything until both are filled. A bot can wait in the Repurposer from workday to workday.
Flight Tester
Throws a bot as far along its row as you choose. Gives ① to your Wallet if it throws the bot over an improvement
Bots land in the entrance of an improvement in its row/column, or directly into the truck in its row. The Flight Tester throws in the direction of its flat side. You can point it in any direction! Forks are improvements; throwing over them gives the money bonus. Bots don’t stop when passing through the Flight Tester.
Static Charger
Makes a bot whenever another bot passes through it.
When a bot passes through the Static Charger, put a bot in 1 of its 2 output holes. The bots in its output holes leave at the start of the next workday. Bots don’t stop when passing through the Static Charger.
Fork
Lets you send any bot that passes through it to either of the two exit arrows of your choice.
Bots don’t stop when passing through the Fork.
Forks are always buyable for ①.
Forks are a great way to add flexibility to your factory, or to deal with poorly placed improvements!
Big Truck
Replaces one of the Trucks in your Loading Dock, and has capacity to hold two bots.
Big Trucks are always buyable for ③. A Big Truck can be replaced into a Huge Truck for ③.
Huge Truck
Replaces one of the Trucks in your Loading Dock, and has capacity to hold three bots.
Huge Trucks are always buyable for ⑤.