Game-in-7-days: Robot and the Cities that Built Him
This is a 7-day-prototype I made a while ago (my first using AS3). I didn’t have time to finish it, but thought I’d post it anyway so it doesn’t rot to death in a pile of old hard drives. There are only 2 robots, so don’t play forever looking for the last 4!
Game Design: I think this is the only game ever created while listening to Bette Midler’s version of “From a Distance” on loop for a week. It’s also one of my only games involving genocide. What is man? What is machine? What does it mean to be human? Perhaps from a distance we’re not so different from giant kill bots? Can a computer make you cry? Yes, if it has lasers.
To play: Use the mouse. Blast stuff with lasers, collect hearts, buy more stuff for better blastage. But watch out! Humans blast back after a while. click to play
January 12th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Wow, for a game made in 7 days this game is amazing. I was hooked. I had to force myself to stop when I reached level 59. Can’t wait to play the completed version.
January 12th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Awesome game!
Although it gets boring once you have 4 or 5 max upgraded robots. How do you unlock the rest of the bots?
January 12th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
you can’t unlock the last 4, I ran out of time so they don’t exist. But I can tell you this: They are AWESOME. :)
January 12th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Game is fun. This is what flash is for, simple and fun little games.
And Kyle, why would the locked 4 robots not be AWESOME? They would if they existed and since they don’t exist they are awesome since we can’t prove they suck.
Hopefully after World of Goo is out you will be able to make some more fun little games. Maybe with hits to World of Goo
Hope to see more,
mike
January 12th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
That is made of win and awesome. Very impressive work for seven days! Can’t wait to see the rest…
January 13th, 2008 at 2:42 am
It’s cool game, but it starts to be boring after a while… Maybe it’s too much easy.
January 13th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Thanks! Yeah, don’t play past level 30 or so. There is no new content after the helicopters.
January 13th, 2008 at 4:37 am
Thats a Pretty sick addictive Prototype =) ..
Love the SFX :)
The Grabbing is just a little Bit annoying, its hard to pick the robot that you want when you have about 4 or 5 of them on the screen :D
January 13th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Good work, can’t wait to see a full version! What sort of robots are you adding? I’d like to see some robots that sorta act as shields to defend your others. And flying robots :P
January 13th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
This game was a lot of fun. Amazing job, especially considering it was done in 7 days. I hope you stick with it a little bit longer and give us some more robots :)
January 13th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Aram – thanks for the review on your site! Funny, my strategy is exactly the same as yours, two fully upgraded clampybots, one in the front, the other in the back, with two fully upgraded perfectbots in the middle.
January 14th, 2008 at 5:20 am
Maybe you should do something with chosing the right robot… if I have two robots near each other, I often drag the wrong one… And if there’ll be more bots, it’ll be worst. And please, make it much harder.
January 14th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
[...] ROBOT GAME [...]
January 15th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I love it! This game is great, especially for 7 days work. I’m really looking forward to the remaining robots. Like others, I found the game very easy. I didn’t even realise I could recharge the robots until city 13 and I still had enough human hearts to create an unstopable army by city 30.
January 15th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Awesome! I love it…
January 16th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Wow, you’ve got some talent! Especially enjoyed the post-apocalyptic music in the background.
January 19th, 2008 at 10:59 am
I thought there is an end in this version, so played till City 89. Had about 50 thousands hearts at that point. Awesome game and setting!
January 19th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
got to level 101 heres the proof!
January 19th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Oppps I mean here:http://i1.tinypic.com/6x8mjhs.jpg
January 19th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Man twice….i’m sorry this is the link i’m a little jittery from playing that game for so long! http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=6x8mjhs&s=1
January 25th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
that was a brilliant game had to pry myself away from the keyboard at level 54 as it was almost 3 in the morning :P
January 26th, 2008 at 1:21 am
That was very fun. I’ve always loved robots and I like mass destruction so this pretty much ties it up. If you’re going to add onto it, however, I suggest adding a few different motions for the robots besides lasers. While lasers are extremely awesome, having a few crushing moves would be nice too. Perhaps we could also decide if we want to point and click to shoot, like a turret. Also, a repair bot that you can turn on and off that cost as much as repairing normally would be awesome. Also, add some simple tanks and perhaps soldiers with rockets. And good robots too that range in size from human-sized to giant level 4 robot boss size. That would be even cooler. I appreciate how the screen zooms out as your robots get more immense. However, I believe the effect would be greater if it was in widescreen format. Changing the width would also solve the space for grabbing robot problem temporarily. Good luck!
January 26th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
This is an amazing game. If it’s incomplete, I’d love to see it completed.
January 29th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
[...] Robot and the Cities that Built Him is a stylish little Flash game by 2D Boy. It was put together in 7 days, described as a prototype, and also as unfinished. Besides having one of the greatest game titles in recent memory, there’s also this great quote: What is man? What is machine? What does it mean to be human? Perhaps from a distance we’re not so different from giant kill bots? Can a computer make you cry? Yes, if it has lasers. [...]
January 30th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Fun game, played until I had 2 of each robot at max level, with upgrades to max level. Difficulty curves up nicely as you have to manage more robots.
January 31st, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Awe- some game. PLeaASEEEEE finish it!! i played this game for an hour straight and got to level 105 before i just quit. it made me cry to quit. *in robot voice* please build more game for me to play.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Ciudad 124 !!!!! Nunca acaba ???? Ya me aburri!!!
February 1st, 2008 at 11:43 am
Good game, please mail me when it is finished.
February 4th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Cool game, I join the rest of the crowd and cheer :)
February 9th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
hey, played till lvl 80 and had fun balancing collecting hearts and keeping up as many bots as possible till my repair bill bankrupted me :)
Awesome prototype and I will definitely return to see if you ever add more content
February 26th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
[...] the guy behind world of goo made a different game, one about robots, in 7 days. What is impressive to me is the artistic nature of the game and how fun and addictive the [...]
March 2nd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Oh my effin’ gawd…
That’s the kind of game I wish I worked on myself D:
It got everything I love in it!
Like some others, I played it for like an hour and reached stupidly high levels.
It’s fun to have over 50 robot lagging the hell out of your computer, zapping everything.
The visual design is simple but so friggin awesome. I’m in love.
June 1st, 2008 at 9:13 am
Awesome game!
But i have only 4 or 5 max upgraded robots. How do you unlock the rest of the bots? Hope to see more )
August 1st, 2008 at 6:38 pm
I really liked this game, you should finish it!
October 24th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Yep, you should finish this. I’d pay for something as addictive as this.
November 1st, 2008 at 10:01 am
This is a great prototype.
I’ve played using 2 different tactics.
1. Just to have many robots with level 1. I reasched 77-th city with 10 clambies and 10 perfects. All of the, had 1-st level.
2. Upgrade several robots to maximum level.
In both cases I had maximal upgrades of recharge rate & lasers.
And what I can say about game expirience?
- I was bored only from 50-55-th city. It’s very good rank when we have only 2 types of robots and 3 types of enemies.
- I think, user control needs a fix: robot with lowerst energy level should be placed on the top (in top layer). Thus this robot will be easy-to-select. Player’s managment will be more effitient. Player will recieve more fun.
- When the player become a rich man, he doesn’t feel much fun from manual hearts-hunting, becouse it changes his “treasure” on very small value. May be, it’s a good idea to add some type of robots for automatical collecting of hearts.
Good luck in implementing of full-featured game based on this prototype!
December 16th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Just found this reviewing the blog archives. Damn you Kyle. Damn you and your Experimental Gameplay cohorts for making such compelling and addictive gameplay from such simple concepts. I know it’s not finished and is quite a simple game, but this kept me entertained for about an hour.
If you want some feedback:
1. I didn’t realise you could recharge robots. I know now that it says that in the background at the start of the game, but that scrolls by too quickly and I was busy controlling robots. Some better hint for that needed.
2. I didn’t know you could drag to move the robots.
3. After about level 25 the game goes into an easy equilibrium. You can easily earn more hearts than it takes to repair and replenish your robots, and you’ve already upgraded as far as you can.
4. The hearts stop bouncing so much if you move your robots to the right, so you can just move your mouse over the ground and collect all the fallen hearts too easily.
5. (technical) it seems to pick the robot closest to the foreground to drag/recharge, even if you clicked on the one offset behind it.
and of course 6. there’s no goals/endpoint, as a gameplay demo it’s awesome, but I was unfulfilled cos I just got bored of doing the same easy thing repeatedly after about city 51 and quit.
January 25th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Dang, this thing is good.
You guys should really think about finishing this game.
And if you are finishing it…
DO IT FASTER!!!
March 21st, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Good luck in implementing of full-featured game based on this prototype!
March 21st, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Good game, please mail me when it is finished
March 21st, 2009 at 6:18 pm
:[
March 21st, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Awesome game!
But i have only 4 or 5 max upgraded robots. How do you unlock the rest of the bots? Hope to see more )
April 15th, 2009 at 7:49 am
great little game, for 7 days or not! when’s the compleate one coming out?!?!?
April 15th, 2009 at 8:23 am
couldnt be bothered to cat=rry on when i got to level 90 something lol
April 25th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
man i lowered my expectations and i got an amazing game! although it gets boring after having all the upgrades and many robots and selecting them becomes a huge pain in the ass, i bet my ass this game is gonna kick ass someday, good job.
July 28th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
what a game …
September 5th, 2009 at 12:55 am
Man please finish it, I love the game and you could make something very big and good with this!
December 1st, 2009 at 9:53 pm
What a great concept, and so simple. PLEASE, please finish this and then finish the 3 part series – and release it on wiiware. That would make me so happy.
April 12th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
KYLE! I know you probably aren’t gonna finish, but AT LEAST TRY! THINK OF ALL THE FANS WHO LOVE YOUR BUTT KICKING GAMEZ! :D