Robot Madness

Category	Rank	Score	Count
Coolness	2356

vdz 2014-12-10 01:48

This game is very unfinished. It starts with a super-long unskippable intro, crashes if you type commands wrong, if you lose it simply quits after a short cutscene (forcing you to sit through the super-long intro again), and perhaps worst of all, it is literally impossible to beat as the robot just doesn't move fast enough to get to the exit in time even if you do everything exactly right.

Although not completely unique, the concept of control via code is still quite rare and it's good to see a game featuring it. The link between 'one screen' and 'terminal' is obvious but fitting; however, the actual gameplay is still multi-screen and the 'terminal' only exists for story reasons (it might as well have been a text box at the bottom of the screen instead).

Unfortunately, the novel control scheme goes to waste because of utterly boring level design. Except for the literally unreachable last part of the level, you can clear the entire thing by just repeating 'r1. turn(); r1.move(20); terminal.transmit();' (without the 'turn' for the first set of commands, of course) throughout the entire game. Though likely intended as a puzzler, you hardly have to think about what to enter here. There are also only three commands, none of which takes advantage of code control's special benefit of being able to accept anything as input (such as entering the name of an object to interact with that object, and having puzzles around that); unfortunately the game offers no gameplay that couldn't be done with a more traditional control scheme.

Graphics are functional but unremarkable.

naoistheguardian 2014-12-10 02:48

Man, really great job here, it's a very well thought-out concept, and it's implemented well. The problem is I had no idea what I was doing for the first while. The only explanations were in a font that I couldn't tell the difference between 'L' and '1', and where the command was stated as 'r1.trun();' instead of 'r1.turn();'. It was really fun once I understood it, a real gem, but it was difficult to get into. If you just post some tips here like, "arrow keys to scroll the screen" and "all commands must end in semicolons, then that would greatly improve the appeal and playability of your game. Great job on making such a feature-full (something my game is not) game, and good luck!

zakchaos 2014-12-10 03:12

the commands are alot to remember for someone just reading them once, also opening dialog was a bit wordy, I probably would have quit on it if it wasnt a ld entry, Great art though, really cool concept, maybe more in game reference of commands?

monkeedude1212 2014-12-11 22:54

Suspenseful buildup, but you deliver the controls during the middle of it, with no other way to keep track of what they are. Also unskippable if you want to start it over to see the controls again. Then I issued the move command, and it crashed.

Art was okay, but that was about the only part of the game that seemed finished.

vdz 2014-12-11 23:28

@monkeedude1212
That's the 'crashes if you type commands wrong' part I mentioned in my comment. If you don't type the () after a command, it crashes.

madalaski 2014-12-13 13:28

Could use a lot more work but overall a nice concept.

rnlf 2014-12-14 14:51

Cannot run it on Windows 7 with Oracle JRE 6: "Could not find the main class: abcd3901.main.Init. Program will exit."

What Java version to I need to run this?

bmacintosh 2014-12-26 23:31

Not a bad use of the theme. Art is pretty good! I initially thought the commands were starting with 'rl' - apparently they actually start with 'r1'. When I tried to use 'rl' nothing would happen and I would get no feedback that anything was wrong.