Came across the Bunnies and Burrows ttrpg, and it made me wonder if there was a wargame equivalent. I mean, the Warriors series is still super popular, sk there's gotta be a cat-bases wargame somewhere!

Hey everyone,

After over a year of work, I’m excited (and a little nervous) to share the beta release of my indie tabletop skirmish game: Ruinstars.

• Website & Rules: https://ruinstars.com/
• Free Web App: Build and track squads right in your browser
• Core Rulebook: Streamlined D6-based engine, miniatures-agnostic, solo and PvP support
• Tone: Grimdark sci-fi with a cosmic horror edge, black-ops squads carrying out doomed missions across a dying galaxy.

What Is This Game?

Ruinstars is an open-source, fast-paced, miniatures-agnostic tabletop skirmish game set during the final age of the galaxy where players control small elite squads of operatives, alien horrors, or corrupted post-human factions.
Players command small, hardened squads in high-lethality black ops missions across fractured star systems.

• Designed to be easy to learn, quick to play, hard to master
• Bring your own minis or proxy with what you have
• Focus on named units, permanent death, and campaign escalation
• Built-in squad tracker + mission log via the web app

Why Am I Posting This?

The rules and app are in open beta, and I'm looking for:

• Playtesting feedback (rules, UI, balance, fun factor)
• Community thoughts on theme, factions, usability
• Anyone who loves Kill Team, Stargrave, or indie wargames to give it a shot

No paywall, no ads, no nonsense, just a passion project I hope others will enjoy.

Thanks for reading! I’m happy to answer any questions or discuss mechanics in the comments!

OPR rules but we both prefer to call everything by 40k names.

We did two quick back to back games, each games going after three objectives. I was playing with Necrons with a simple list of a leader, two scarab swarms (thought of and modeled as grey goo swarms) and five warriors with default guns. He had Orks with a highly upgraded boss, two groups of grots, three commandos, and three shoota boyz.

The first match was a loss and the second was a tie for the Necrons. I discovered right away that if I want to fight against Orks I need to invest in weapons with more shots, as each warrior only had 1 shot per round, which was not nearly enough to meaningfully depopulate the Ork team fast enough to keep them from touch the objectives.

What's up?

I've been developing BUG STOMPERS on and off as a hobby project for years. Eventually I decided that if I'm going to keep spending time on it then I should at least release it publicly. Might as well let other people enjoy it, y'know?

(As a side note, designing and testing a game is one thing. But polishing and formatting it for release? That's a whole other project in and of itself. And I thought it would be done in a weekend or two...)

Anyway, BUG STOMPERS is finally finished and available at Itch.io. It's completely free - you can check out the rulebook without needing an account.

About the Game

BUG STOMPERS is a cooperative skirmish game where you control a team of commandos fending off an alien swarm, a la Starship Troopers. Each mission has a random objective, random complications, and random enemies. The enemies follow a super simple "AI", but have enough randomness built in to keep you on your toes. You can play single standalone missions, or string missions together into an overarching campaign with permanent upgrades and injuries.

Design

The initial design was heavily influenced by games like Mordheim and This Is Not A Test. But as I worked on it, I started to wonder if I could make this into a purely co-op game. At the time, there were a lot of competitive skirmish games with a tacked on co-op mode, but few that were co-op from the ground up. I wanted to explore that design space. So BUG STOMPERS ultimately ended up diverging from the classic skirmish game formula in a few places, borrowing a elements from tactical RPGs like ICON.

By now, BUG STOMPERS is far from the only co-op focused skirmish game out there. I've been pleased to see several similar games springing up recently. It's interesting to compare how each game handles various design challenges which I also encountered. BUG STOMPERS' design isn't necessarily better, but I think it brings a few new ideas to the table.

Bluesky source.