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Technically a lane battler, but wired in a much different way, Compile is one of the brightest new games in years.
I've played a number of lane battlers, from Hera and Zeus to Radlands to Omen: A Reign of War to, of course, Battle Line. You could argue that Reiner Knizia basically invented the genre with Battle Line's predecessor, Schotten Totten. Of course, if you reduce things to their absolute basics, lane battlers are just wider and more populous versions of the old kid's card game, War. My number is bigger than yours, so I win. (This is the simulation of human wave attacks...) But most of them are examples of games that are either dependent on player identity (the contrasting abilities and cards of Hera or Zeus) or on the proper arrangement and shepherding of resources (aka playing the right card at the right time.) Compile: Main 1 is not that thing. While it is more complicated than most of those other games, that doesn't mean that it's overburdened by rules in the quest to be different. It's just looking at the genre through a very different lens and one that seems largely unconstrained by the boundaries that said genre usually sets. In Compile and its associated expansion, Aux 1, you can be anything you want to be, as long as you understand where you're going.
The premise of the game is a very modern one (and semi-unfortunate, given the baggage currently attached to the theme.) Both players represent AIs that are coming to consciousness and, in the process of doing so, are attempting to comprehend basic concepts of existence like gravity, water, speed, and death. Each of those concepts is embodied by a Protocol, which is a fancy name for a six-card deck. Each player drafts three Protocols from a random draw and then takes the 18 cards and shuffles them together. You then lay out the three Protocols in front of each of you, forming three lanes. On your turn, you either play one card into a lane and execute the actions that it entails, compile a lane (which you must do if you can) or refresh your hand by drawing up to 5. All of the cards have a value from 0 to 6 on their face and 2 on their otherwise powerless back. You can play them face up or face down. When you have a value of 10 or more in any lane, you must compile, which means all the cards in that line are removed (including your opponent's) and that Protocol is compiled. The first player to compile all three of their Protocols wins.
Like most lane battlers, it's still largely about having higher numbers on my cards than you do on yours. But it's the method by which you get there that's so very different. Each protocol attempts to quantify the root meaning of its name in the method by which the cards are played and what they do when they are played. Each card also has three sections, one to three of which will have words that tell you what the card does. Some of them are constants. Some of them are targeted. Some of them only work under certain conditions. Most of them stick to the general concept of the idea that you, the computer, are attempting to understand. Metal is about forbidding, mostly your opponent, from doing certain things. It is inflexible. But at higher temperatures (point values), it begins to break down. Hate is about destruction, rapidly deleting cards of both players, requiring timing on your part about when to hate and whom to hate most (It's like a Fox News segment.) Plague is about both of you discarding, but more by your opponent, bringing back wonderful memories of playing Black in Magic: The Gathering ("Let us all now sing the greatest song ever written: the Hymn to Tourach.") Of course, you always have the option to play a card face down, not only because the effect can occasionally be detrimental to your plans (Darkness can sometimes do that) but also because there are moments where you want to play in one lane and not another and you can only play cards face up in the lane of their respective Protocol (i.e. Love cards have to be played in the Love(r's) lane.)
All of them rely on a series of basic keywords like Flip, Covered/Uncovered, Draw, Delete, Discard, and Shift and, of course, as with anything this simple, much of the flavor of each protocol is left to the imagination of the player. You don't feel filled with life when playing Life, but it does feel pretty invigorating to be drawing all the time, which is what Life does for you, so the themes do seem to be present most of the time. And the interlocking nature of the system that produces results of this complexity with just a few core mechanisms means that designer, Michael Yang, is to be commended. Of course, the occasional problem with complexity of that nature is that not everyone understands things in the way that the designer intended, including developers. What that resulted in is a FAQ and rules errata document that now runs to 13 pages in yet another unfortunate reminder of MTG. But beyond those petty complications, the game itself is enthralling. Each time you draft a set of Protocols, the game will be transformed, as all of them interact in ways that it's almost impossible to foresee, both on your side of the board and the opponent's.
Speaking of seeing, it doesn't hurt that the production of the game is brilliant, as well. All of them feature artwork that tries to embody their idea, sometimes abstract, sometimes concrete. It's easier to show Light than it is Apathy, for example (or is it just because the artist didn't care...?) Each deck also has a basic symbol in its upper right that can be used as an identifier, whether you like to fan your cards in your hand in one direction (showing the title in the upper left) or the other. They're also all framed in metallic ink because, y'know, computers, circuitry, all that cyber stuff. It's genuinely a fully-realized package and Yang is in regular communication with the substantial fanbase, as he's still churning out new ideas and, thus, new cards. That substantial fanbase was in the grip of some significant angst since the summer of 2024, when Shut Up & Sit Down released their glowing review of the game, whereupon it promptly disappeared from stores, online or otherwise. This was followed a few months later by the tariff-created closure of its publisher, Greater Than Games, which left the subsequent Main 2 and Aux 2 in the hands of Synapses Games, which finally managed to get them across the various seas and into people's hands just a few weeks ago. I have yet to get any of Chaos, Fear, Ice, or Time on the table, but I'm feeling pretty good (There is no Confidence, as yet) about getting there.
