Bolted! is a puzzle game where players race to assemble a bizarre creature -- or "make friends" -- by piecing together mismatched body part cards.
Players are "creature-crafters" apprenticing under the famous Doctor von Gravenstein. Each player builds one Friend by playing body part cards onto the creature they’re assembling in front of them.
In the Build phase, play as many part cards as you can onto any one limb of your Friend. New parts must connect to an existing part with the same socket color. In this way, you can create branching groups and chains of parts on your Friend. Part cards may also be scrapped (ground up into fuel) in order to power Tools, which give you advantages and allow you to build in different ways. Scrapped cards become resources you can hoard to power big moves and combos at crucial moments.
Following each Build phase, there is a Parade. Your creations in-progress are displayed to the Doctor's gallery of billionaire Patrons, each of whom have expressed a desire to see very particular patterns of parts on your Friends. Any Patron whose pattern you have matched will pay you in coins matching the number of parts you used in that pattern. Having earned these points, players return to Build again, attempting to modify their Friend in order to satisfy additional patterns before the next Parade.
Every time a Patron pays a player, they leave the gallery and are replaced. After six Patrons have paid any player, all the Patrons will help activate the Doctor's giant electrical switch to bring the Friends to life! This triggers the final round of the game, after which all players compare their accumulated points.
The player with the most points has built the Best Friend, and wins the game. (The other players are recycled into new body parts to make more Friends.)
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