Years ago, the eccentric visionary Dr. Droog abandoned his orbital research station to sentient, energy-devouring purple crystals, reprogrammed its maintenance bots into hostile Electrocrabs, and fled in an escape pod to the lethal planet below. For years, the galaxy assumed he died a hero: a tragic narrative heavily promoted by his employers, Droog Corp, who promptly filed for the largest life insurance payout in galactic history. There’s just one problem: the galactic insurance company refuses to pay out without proof of death, offering an astronomical bounty to anyone who can bring Droog back alive. To make matters worse, salvage drones discovered that the deadly purple crystals—dubbed Curium—are the most energy-dense substance in the known universe. Suddenly, this radioactive death trap has become the most valuable real estate in the cosmos. Human workers are fragile and expensive Show full description
Years ago, the eccentric visionary Dr. Droog abandoned his orbital research station to sentient, energy-devouring purple crystals, reprogrammed its maintenance bots into hostile Electrocrabs, and fled in an escape pod to the lethal planet below. For years, the galaxy assumed he died a hero: a tragic narrative heavily promoted by his employers, Droog Corp, who promptly filed for the largest life insurance payout in galactic history. There’s just one problem: the galactic insurance company refuses to pay out without proof of death, offering an astronomical bounty to anyone who can bring Droog back alive. To make matters worse, salvage drones discovered that the deadly purple crystals—dubbed Curium—are the most energy-dense substance in the known universe. Suddenly, this radioactive death trap has become the most valuable real estate in the cosmos. Human workers are fragile and expensive, so rival megacorporations have taken the cheap route: air-dropping swarms of disposable, mass-produced 8-bit robots called ChipWits directly into the hazard zone. Armed with nothing more than 64KB of RAM, basic visual logic, or raw 65C02 assembly, your mission is simple: establish automated colonies, harvest the volatile Curium, fend off the Electrocrabs, and hunt down Dr. Droog to shatter an insurance scam in late-stage blue-collar capitalism.