Metrorunner

Metrorunner is a competitive 1–5 player cyberpunk strategy game where your worker does not sit on an action space. Your Runner rides a loop around Mirror City's five districts, gathering resources, taking jobs, fulfilling corporate contracts, building influence, and hacking a central circuitry puzzle for black-market opportunities. Because players share the Metro route, getting where you want to go is partly a planning problem and partly a matter of hoping another Runner does not occupy exactly the space you needed.

The Rondel Is a Subway Line

Movement gives Metrorunner its rhythm. You are circling the city rather than selecting freely from a menu of actions, so accomplishing a job often means planning several stops ahead.

Then there is the PANOP network in the middle of the table. Hacking is represented by an actual tile puzzle: manipulate circuitry to create the connection your Runner needs and breach the system. It feels appropriately different from simply paying three cubes for a generic “Hack” action.

How the Game Works

Each player chooses a Runner with a unique hacking ability and travels around the Metro connecting Mirror City's five districts. Movement determines which jobs, resources, upgrades, and other opportunities you can access.

Jobs ask you to gather particular resources and reach useful locations. Completing them builds reputation and helps fulfill larger Contracts. Credits can be spent on black-market technology, while Influence and Notoriety unlock upgrades that make your Runner increasingly capable.

When you hack the network, you manipulate the shared PANOP tile grid. Rotating and rearranging circuitry creates paths through network nodes, and successful hacks open additional rewards.

Because Runners share the route and compete over resources, jobs, and positions, sequencing matters. A route that works perfectly in your head may become less perfect when someone gets off the Metro one district ahead of you.

Why You’ll Love It

• Turns a rondel into a physical Metro route where location and player congestion matter.
• The central hacking puzzle gives the cyberpunk theme its own distinct mechanism.
• Jobs and Contracts turn resource collection into concrete multi-turn plans.
• Unique Runner abilities and upgrades let different characters approach the network differently.
• Solo play uses a dedicated A.I. system rather than simply asking you to beat a score with no opposition.

Game Details

🧩 Players: 1–5
⏱️ Playtime: 30–90 minutes
🎂 Age: 14+
🗂️ Genre: Cyberpunk strategy, rondel movement, contracts, resource management, spatial puzzle
🎯 Complexity: Medium; around a 2.7/5 hobby-game weight, with familiar resource planning plus an unusual spatial hacking system
🔁 Replayability: High from different Runners, variable jobs and contracts, player blocking, upgrades, and the changing network puzzle
🎮 Great for fans of: cyberpunk settings, Lords of Waterdeep-style contract fulfillment, rondel games, route planning, and puzzle mechanisms embedded inside a larger strategy game

What's in the Box

• 1 Double-Sided Game Board
• 9 PANOP Tiles
• 40 Job Cards
• 5 Starting Job Cards
• 30 Network Cards
• 4 Contract Cards
• 11 Runner Character Cards
• 5 Runner Boards
• 5 Runner Figures
• 5 Influence Markers
• 5 Notoriety Markers
• 100 Resource Cubes
• 20 Credit Tokens
• 10 Contract Tokens
• 10 Brute Force Tokens
• 10 Upgrade Tokens
• 20 A.I. Cards and 2 Rogue Tokens for Solo Play
• 5 Reference Cards
• 1 Starting Player Token
• 1 Score Pad
• 1 Organizer Insert
• 1 Rulebook