Some games are just down right adorable. They manage to present experiences that are simply so lovely that they manifest themselves as reminders of why you play video games in the first place. You keep smiling all the way from start to finish and miss it when it’s over.
This is what Puzzle Bots is. This indie game developed by Erin Robinson, Dave Gilbert and John Green, is simply a mere pleasure to play. A true gem in a lovely wrapping.
Puzzle Bots is an interesting and rather innovative approach to the adventure game genre, and feels to some extent like a mixture of a Lucasarts adventure game and Sierra’s The Incredible Machine. An interesting mix that works out amazingly.
The basic idea of the game is to control multiple small robots to coorporate in order to solve puzzles in everyday environments. Since the robots are small, the environments are on a zoomed in scale. Sort of what it feels like to play the classic car racing game Micro Machines. The robots have different abilities that have to be ulilised to manipulate objects in the small scale environments.
The graphics are well made simply adorable, and so is the sound work. Animation could use some work here and there though, as it looks a bit rough and underdeveloped. The music fits the scenes well, and the voice acting is impressive for an indie production. The charming storyline is interesting enough to keep you motivated to see what will happen next, and the use of humour is proper, light-hearted and excellenty written.
The rather steep price of $14.99 is a bit unfortunate, and will probably scare off a few potential players. Despite the excellence of the game, tha rather short play time of 3 or 4 hours is not worth it. My advice would be to lower the price drastically; even cut it in half.
Puzzle Bots is one of the best game experiences I’ve had in a while, and I warmly recommend the game to anyone who like puzzle solving and games of a charming nature. It is simply impossible not to fall in love with the little bastards.
Gamesta.com does a double feature. On one hand, it reports on the latest bundle, but it also talks to Wadjet Eye Games about the importance of bundles in the industry.
"Seems like we just had the Indie Royale Winter Bundle, but it’s time for the Xmas Bundle 2.0 already! The Xmas Bundle 2.0 contains the point-and-click adventure game Puzzle Bots from Wadjet Eye, Colour Bind from Finn Morgan, a physics puzzler, and Offspring Fling! from Kyle Pulver. (IGM’s Emerson Smith has interviewed Kyle Pulver here, as well) The bundle includes two very differnt Serious Sam spinoffs, Serious Sam Double D from Mommy’s Best Games and Serious Sam: The Random Encounter from Vlambeer. Finally, Little Kingdom from Andreil Game is an indie builder game in a fantasy setting. All these games are available through Desura, and all but Little Kingdom are available on Steam too." - Meg Stivison
Steam’s deal of the day for September 24th is Puzzle Bots. Also the sale will end in 24 hours, hence the “deal of the day”, so you have until 1pm EST or 10am PST tomorrow to grab this deal. Below is a description on the game as well as some important information.
