Check out the fancy new career training for the employees at Gremlins, Inc

The new Automated Competitors DLC for Gremlins Inc, a great example of a videogame boardgame, gives each of the tokens a special ability. Imagine Monopoly — I know, I know, eww! — where the little dog gets extra movement, the battleship can attack other pieces to drive back a space, and the top hat, uh… Never mind the top hat. Let’s say the iron gets the ability to, uh… Okay, never mind the iron. The thimble gets to, well, uh… Look, I’m sure you get my point. Quit badgering me about stupid Monopoly.

In Gremlins, Inc, these abilities add a nice bit of flavor and gameplay. For instance, in my game with Kelly Wand (you can watch it here), my devil guy would have gotten victory points for mucking around in hell and he could have chosen among misfortunes instead of just taking whatever he draws. Kelly Wand’s garbageman would have gotten less money and would have been better at digging around in the dump. Our AI opponent, the prosecutor, would have gotten the best deal. With the new DLC, a prosecutor can steal votes to be elected governor, he pays reduced bribes to the police, and he can extort money from the other players. I call dibbs on the prosecutor in my next game! As part of the game’s thorough iconography — Gremlins Inc understands what it takes to make a videogame boardgame — any events associated with the new abilities are indicated by a light bulb.

Automated Competitors is the second DLC for Gremlins, Inc. It’s available today for five dollars. The first DLC, Uninvited Guests, was just cosmetic stuff. It was released last month, also for five dollars. A new patch, free to everyone, is also available today. It adds some new interface stuff and new cards. One of the cards is called Astral Elevator. It builds a permanent bridge between the bank and the astral plane, but only for the person who played the card. How is that fair? Unless, of course, I play it.

Correction: The character abilities are part of the free update and they’re completely independent of the paid DLC. This latest DLC, like the previous paid DLC, only adds cosmetic options such as character portraits, new music, and ingame emoticons. Everyone gets the new character abilities and furthermore, the developers have said they’re committed to making gameplay updates available to everyone free of charge. Thanks to Mysterio for the correction!