Play game
RootJam 2026 - The Beetle Toil's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creativity/Uniqueness | #5 | 4.412 | 4.412 |
| Use of This Year's Theme | #17 | 3.941 | 3.941 |
| Clarity of Rules/Mechanics | #33 | 2.647 | 2.647 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Includes Law of Root?
No
Includes PnP?
Yes
Includes TTS files?
No
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Hey, trying to playtest this and wondering if you have files to print out the tokens? Do you need to have an engineer token in the same clearing as a mill to enhance recycling suits? Thanks
The artwork for this is so phenomenal, I love it very very much. Even the colours themselves are so pleasing to look at. And the idea of the ball being your vip is genuinely so fun. Really love this so much
Thank you ! Your feedback means a lot to me, especially coming from you. Your faction is incredible, and your artwork is so powerful.
Thank you! I got to work some 2 other artists I admire a lot!
This looks like such a fantastic idea! I love the vibe and the overall concept of the board creating waste that serves this faction's goal. The art is also incredibly evocative and touching, right down to the board background.
I have a vague impression that there might be a little too much happening at once, but since I haven't had the time to dive deep into the mechanics yet, that feeling might be completely wrong. I'll definitely give it another read after the jam!
Bravo!
Thank you so much !
You're probably right. There might be too many mechanics compared to the official factions; it would probably need to be streamlined a bit.
I really like your idea too, congratulations!
Really cute faction and great concept ! However there are a few things I don't quite understand.
"Beetles cannot recycle bird waste" I thought waste were the tokens of the three suits, so what counts as a bird waste ?
If I have the mouse = rabbit engineer, does that mean I can also count rabbits as mice or only mice as rabbits ?
It says that the mill only recyles matching waste, but it seems that you also recycle other waste for 1 VP, so a mill can recycle any waste ?
In set-up do you place waste in matching clearings or at random ? Same question for industrial overflow
Overall really interesting submission and I love the artwork :)
Thanks!
It's just a sentence I wrote to set the tone, stating that, in this specific action, you can't use the “bird” card as a wild card.
-It goes both ways : mouse = rabbit rabbit=mouse. But you can't reason like this : "ok I have the token M=R and R=F so M=F" . No you must have the specific engineers.
- Each Mill recycles matching waste plus any Waste allowed by engineers. So for exemple, you have just de Fox Mill, you can only recyle Fox Waste for 2VP. But if you also have the F=R Engineers token, that Mill can now recycle the Rabbit Waste for 1VP
-In my mind, it's in matching clearings
Thank you :)
This is a really unique idea! Every time I think I understand how everything works, I seem to come across something new to discover. Great job!
In the "Build" step, it says that you cannot have more Mills than Shareholders in Recycling. Does this just apply when you are building a new Mill, or for all future turns (i.e. if I have 2 Mills on the map, does that mean I must always keep at least 2 Shareholders in Recycling)?
Thank you so much for your feedback!
Yes, sorry, I admit I left that rule a bit vague. From my perspective, it only applied during build. At one point, I considered requiring that it apply both during build step and throughout the game, so that if you removed a shareholder from the recycling sector, you’d have to shut down a mill. But that might be too restrictive. I was thinking that the “to the Director’s Office” step which comes second in the order of Birdsong actions and means that any shareholder you want to move spends a turn giving no bonuses before you can reassign them, would be a sufficient constraint. What do you think about that?
I did notice that timing, and it creates some interesting decisions. It makes me really consider how important a "transfer" is: am I willing to sacrifice this turn to do something different next turn? I do wonder if it makes the faction a little too slow to respond to a changing board state.
E.g. At the start of my turn, I see that I'm low on warriors. I would like to recruit a bunch this turn, but I don't have any Shareholders in Security. I would need to spend this turn removing Shareholders (thus limiting what I could do right now) to then reassign them next turn and take a big recruit.
This is probably a worst-case scenario (maybe I should've been planning better!). And design shouldn't be about hand-holding the player; they should be free to make decisions (or mistakes) and learn from the consequences (e.g. don't put 3 cards in the Build slot for the Eyrie). Maybe the long-term planning is a feature of the faction instead of a bug.
At first blush, I would say that Logistics seems significantly stronger than Security or Recycling, so I can't imagine many scenarios where you would want remove a Shareholder and reduce your action pool. So maybe it just becomes a bit of a swapping between Security and Recycling? But I'd defer to any actual playtests that you've performed ;-)
Hi Roroot. Some questions to understand better the faction. 1. You mention a ball’s item slot. I don’t understand how crafted items work on it 2. In the manifest there are 5 contract cards. Are they all different? Otherwise an enemy wouldn’t have interest in giving you a second warrior. 3. How many VP you gain when a player give you a warrior as shareholder? And how many when you return the warrior?
Hi Antricho, Thank you for your question.
1 : It's very simple for the item slot. You can considere you have the same slot as usual on the faction board (the one in up right corner) but it's on the meeple Ball. There is only 1 slot on it. Rats and vagabonds don't just have to be in a clearing with your pieces to steal the item, they have to be in the clearing where the Ball is. And if the Ball reaches a mill, the item is destroyed. I wanted to create a countdown effect.
2 : Yes sorry, I wasn't very clear on that point. All cards are identical because each player can only have 1 warrior on your board, in other words, each player may be a shareholder only once. (There are maximum 6 players in a Root game, you + 5 players) However, the sector in which the beetles place their warrior does matter. He will benefit from the effect corresponding to the sector to which he is assigned.
3 : The cost for a player to give you a warrior is 1VP and the same way around