Gaming Robocalypse

[Veho]

I've finished Robocalypse.

It's great. It's a neat little mini-RTS, that takes a little getting used to, but when you do, it's tons of fun.

And by "getting used to" I mean "learning to play", because Robocalypse is a new game with its own rules. People get horribly frustrated by it when it refuses to behave like Warcraft.

Here are some tips and tricks.

The map is divided into several sectors or areas, defined by control points. Robots won't go into enemy or neutral areas unless you order them to. However. The area around a control point you control is "yours", and your robots will wander around it aimlessly and attack everything they see, and more often than not get themselves killed. They call it "patrolling", the little idiots. In order to stop them, you should place "defend" flags around your base.

Each "defend" flag will "attract" 3 assault robots and one medic. If you have 4 assault robots free, one of them will wander off. Similarly, the normal action flag will issue a command to three of your robots (at random) and one medic, if they are available (i.e. if they're not defending anything, and if you have that many).

"Defend" flags are the best way to control your robots. Action flags will make them go somewhere, and then waddle off after reaching the destination. Also, faster robots won't wait for the slower ones, and pathfinding is rocket science for those guys. Expect half of them to get lost, and expect the weakest units to arrive there first and get slaughtered. The best way to get your robots somewhere is to capture the control point in that area, place several "defend" flags where you want your guys to go (you can only place defend flags in your areas, but if you manage to get a cloaked spy into the enemy base, you can capture their control point and presto, it's your territory, with the option of "defending" it), and then remove the old defend flags. Small steps, though, move the defend flags bit by bit. You literally have to hold them by the hand and nudge them along.

Defend flags won't be removed by the "clear all" button, you have to remove them manually, one by one. Remember where you placed them.

Builder robots will want to repair stuff. It has a higher priority than resource gathering. Once any of your buildings is attacked, one will rush over to repair it, even if it's on the other side of the map. Especially if it's on the other side of the map. Sometimes it's actually wise to destroy your own building manually to make the eager little idiots go back to resource gathering.

Okay, those are the "quirks", "rules", or as people who don't have the patience/instruction booklet to figure them out would call them, "bugs", of the game. Any other weird things the robots do or omit to do are the actual bugs.

One more thing. The "upgrades" researched in the Mechanic Workshop and the Supply Depot really have an effect on the game, and aren't for cosmetic purposes only.


Back to my thoughts. The story is wacky, it begins by jumping the shark and then jumps several more sharks, some more assorted sealife, and a row of at least thirty homeless people along the way. The animations are really not good, they're done with three very immovable sprites altogether (plus lots of zooming and panning), and the self-referential 4th-wall-be-damned humour might start to pall after a while. Which, incidentally, is entirely unlike the characters and jokes you find in the gameplay. The robot and building sprites are well done, the terrains look good, lots of details (the "post-apocalyptic" terrain really looks "Fallout 1-2 post-apocalyptic"), and the robots spouting silly banter ("You can't shoot a guy with glasses", medic-bots shouting "Geneva convention" when being shot at, or the morale-boosting battlecry, "Florence Nightingale") are just adorable. It almost seems like the entire gameplay (art and text included) was made entirely independently of the cutscenes, and the game "story" was added later on as an afterthought.

Not adding the option of replaying finished levels is just plain idiotic.

All in all, I think the game is lots of fun (once you figure out what to do), and I hope it becomes a success large enough to make other developers start making more RTSes.

Can you even say RTSes? How do you pluralize an acronym?

Never mind.




Thoughts?

 

[weebwobb]

Just wanted to give this post some love since this is such a nice little RTS game.
Have only completed 3 missions but am really loving Robocalypse so far. It's more than just the gameplay, which is good, but the artful style of the graphics and clever humor go a long ways to making this game stand out. Give it a try if you get the chance.

 

[Veho]

Are we the only two people on the forum that like this game?

 

[Banger]

Are we the only two people on the forum that like this game?

I am unsure if I like the game as I have yet to play the game. I do not play that many gamez.

 

[pilotwangs]

Will play soon,it's on my ''to play'' list.

 

[dib]

It was okay, but suffered from a lot of peculiar AI behaviors as you noted, such as the precedence of repair over gathering. That fact that will abandon their primary jobs simply to repair buildings that are prone to getting attacked anyway, like turrets, is unforgivable in a game that is supposed to be about strategy. That is bad strategy anyway you cut it. And these things tend to spiral, so first production halts, then your builders start drawing fire, now you have no resources and need new builders, and it's already too late.

It's symptomatic of the game's approach to keeping the gameplay 'hands off' from units, focusing your attention strictly on tje menial tasks like just pointing out where to add a building. I understand why they went this direction, but the fact that it doesn't play so well just proves the fact that these games simply don't work on the DS.

The key to understanding this game is to play predecessors like Warlocked. Then you perceive this game for the novelty that it really is: less entertaining and more amusing for being an oddity on a system where it just doesn't belong. And for what it's worth, I loved Warlocked. This game not so much.

The story is terrible. Not in the sense that it aimed at being intentionally absurd, just in the fact that they failed at humor and it's rife with typos and engrish. Some kid with a book shelf of Captain Underpants may have a slightly different perspective, but one from which I cannot speak.

And not being able to replay missions was what ultimately drove me away. When you give somebody a list of objectives, and they miss a couple, they may be compelled to try it again. Particularly if some of said objectives are secret.

Nice attempt though. The production values are decent. The units are all large and animate, contrary to the likes of Revenant Wings where you would get a massive blob of moving sprites. It's not a bad game, just one I wouldn't recommend except for aforementioned novelty status.

FYI, you pluralize a word ending in an S with an apostrophe. RTS' is a legitimate way of phrasing it.

 

[Jeff88]

The story wasn't that bad in my opinion, it's quite wacky and witty.

 

[Veho]

Nice writeup, dib, those are some valid points. However, they don't have to be deal-breakers to everyone, even though they drove you away from (re)playing. They might just be minor nuisances, or be overlooked altogether.

As for the repair compulsion the drones have, it's an established rule within the game. When a building is being attacked, one drone will go and repair it. As I said before, sometimes it's better to destroy your own building (why else would they give you the "destroy" button?) than to have your gatherer unit waste its time trying to repair it instead of gathering resources. But I don't see why this would be "unforgivable in a strategy game". It is a rule within the setting. The player has to take it into account, and shape his/her strategy around it (as well as the other rules). Now, I'm not saying it isn't annoying, but saying it's "bad strategy" is like saying that the movement pattern of the bishops in chess is "bad strategy". As I said, don't expect the game to behave like Warcraft just because it's the same genre.