A round
Claim ground
Everybody puts down their first holdings on a board dealt the way the genre deals its own — random ground, the letter spiral for the numbers — so no two games open on the same map.
Roll, build, trade
A roll pays out to whoever sits beside the sectors it names. You spend what you collect on holdings and on lanes between the sectors, and you trade with the bank and the docks rather than by haggling — a table of four does not have twenty-five minutes for haggling.
The nastiest moment of the genre survived the trip: a seven moves the hazard and robs somebody beside it, and so does a drone. Your hand is secret and your hand size is not, which is the same claim Out of Place's location makes and is proven by the same test.
The bots are inside the rules
They are not a separate program playing the game; they are part of the reducer, so a replay reproduces every decision they ever made. They place by expected yield, trade only to finish a build, and put the hazard on whoever is winning.
That is usually you.
Ten points
First to ten claims the belt, and the game stops there rather than playing out a foregone conclusion.
On the sheet
Questions people ask
Can we play The Belt with only two people?
Yes. Bots take the empty chairs and they are properly part of the game rather than a filler — they place by expected yield and they will put the hazard on whoever is ahead.
Is twenty-five minutes really twenty-five minutes?
It is the longest thing on the shelf and it is the one to be honest about. Trading is with the bank and the docks rather than between players, and the game ends at ten points rather than playing out, which is most of what keeps it inside a coffee break.
Does anybody have to install anything to play The Belt?
No. It runs in the browser everyone already has open. One person opens a room, reads out the six-character code or pastes the link into the channel, and everyone else is at the table in a couple of seconds.
Do we need accounts?
No. There is no sign-up, no password and no email address anywhere in the flow. You pick a name when you sit down, and that is the whole of it.
How many people can play The Belt?
1 to 4 — best with anyone. bots take the empty chairs. A room seats up to 12.
How long does a game of The Belt take?
About 25 minutes, which is the length of a coffee break rather than the length of a games night. Nobody is the host in the sense of holding the controls, so a round finishes whether or not everyone is still looking at it.
Does it work over a video call?
That is what it is for. The game is on the screen and the talking is on the call — nobody has to describe a board to anybody, and the parts that must stay private stay on the server rather than being read out.