AI is rapidly advancing, almost too quickly for humans to keep up. You are tasked with infiltrating a high security facility and retrieving a package of great importance.
Robot Operator
Solve the puzzles and save the world.
Solve the puzzles and save the world.
AI is rapidly advancing, almost too quickly for humans to keep up. You are tasked with infiltrating a high security facility and retrieving a package of great importance.
Bugged release. Made me think about gamification and conditioning
In Robot Operator, you sneak into a robotics facility in search of a purported highly advanced and dangerous robot. What you find is a bunch of incredibly rudimentary robot puzzles, which you should ignore, and beeline straight to finding a dangerous one, then exiting with it.
However what I found myself doing was visiting each robot space and completing its puzzle, even though all I should have done is start each robot, and try to pick it up. One puzzle is even uncompletable, as there is not enough space for the number of commands that would be needed to complete it, which is very unsatisfying. This made me reflect on how I have been conditioned to completing objectives in games just because they are there.
Then there are the bugs and things that seem incomplete. You are briefed that the mission is highly dangerous, but all you will find are robot vacuums and little tank droids that won't damage you. I made sure I had creative mode off and damage on, but no damage, not even from stepping on them. The robots tend to get stuck in corners, too. There is something more dangerous than the robots though: falling into one of pits around the robot arenas, and never being able to escape. I assume that's why previous operators died on this mission and not the robots. The bigger problem though is that the robot that is the target has a bug where trying to pick it up with right-click will crash the game, which I had to fix to complete the game.
As with Nathan S.'s 2022 Jam, the visual art is pretty good, but there is not even a footstep sound and in fact the only sound I can recall is a little "whoosh" at the end. The game would really have benefitted from some sounds, which are easily available at places like Freesound.
Offers too little
Another sad case of "author ran out of time"?
The beginning of the game looks like an outright bug. After a first briefing, the screen is (almost?) completely black. I thought the game is broken because I couldn't see the vent I am supposed to open. It is VERY dark and I had to find it basically blind. And the vent glows but it is VERY hard to see. Not a great start.
Once I finally entered the facility, the real game began.
There are a couple of very basic rooms to explore but they're mostly useless. Lots of robots move around but they're harmless vacuum bots or mini-tanks? There is an adventure-game-like interface of inspecting, reporting, using things you see. Sadly, much of it is unfortunately unused. The game has a lot of dialog but using chat for it is a terrible idea: Font is too small.
Eventually I found some kind of "robo-labyrinth". You try out some very basic puzzles where you can guide robots through mazes with instructions (move North, South, etc.). I wasted my time "solving" the puzzles but the actual goal is to just start the puzzles and pick up the robot that looks different because it's the battle robot. I solved all puzzles but it's no challenge at all; you just need to count the squares, basically.
Once you picked up the battle robot, you must reach the exit and that's it.
I have died like 2 times for no apparent reason. Suddenly a screen showed up telling me a robot killed me. I don't know where it came from and it was an insta-death. Very confusing.
Overall, the game is too short and not fun. :-(
Instructions unclear, do I live here now?
(Disclaimer: This review was made in the context of the game jam 2023. May contain spoilers.)
Had some cool mechanics, but...
OVERVIEW - Robot operator was pretty fun, and had some cool mechanics, but, there was not much of a [obvious] goal to the game. The puzzle part was pretty cool... maybe that sould've been more so the focus? Instead of a story-mode, maybe just making a puzzle game? Some that also would've strengthened the game a lot, is, adding sound effects, and maybe even bg music. Anyways, good job Nathan; I thought it was pretty cool how the robots worked... maybe just a bit more work on the player-friendliness of the game.
RATING SYSTEM:
1 - Not a fan 2 - Meh 3 - Okay 4 - Good 5 - Love it!
GAMEPLAY - 2
GRAPHICS - 4
PLAYER-FRIENDLY - 2
PERFORMANCE - 5
SOUNDS & MUSIC - 1
THEME - 1
TOTAL - 16 (Okay)
Saving the world doesn't require solving the puzzles, sadly
I can't bring myself to give this a positive recommendation, despite how much I like the assets and storyline. It's vaguely backrooms-y and the darkness combined with the textures and robots is mildly terrifying. Every time you exit the game and reload, you save your progress but you have to go through the same intro again and lose your old position. Not a big deal though. The problem is that there is simply not much gameplay - the robot control panels are awesome, and solving the robot puzzles was quite entertaining, but they don't actually unlock anything or serve any purpose at all. Your job is simply to get a "robot_2" in a short amount of time, which looks like a black tank, and to find the exit door and right-click on it. This can be done in less than 2 minutes if you're into speedruns, and I know because I tried :) There's also certain places that if you fall into, you won't be able to get out. All the puzzles work, you just need to use the NE/NW/SW/SE direction indicators.
Some more sounds are needed, as there appears to be only one sound during the course of the game (when you finish the game), and making the puzzles actually unlock sectors or switches would be satisfying and justify solving the puzzles! I see there are also some empty rooms on the map, which may have been part of the story, but weren't completed in time(?) - this game is probably still a WIP, so I'm excited to see what will become of it.
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The beginning is so dark I can't even see the vent I'm supposed to break through
Like, I can't play. I had to do
/grantme alland noclip myself out of it to actually understand what was happening. Turning on as much as I could the brightness of my screen didn't help. If I can't move the first step in the game, I can't play the game; which is a huge problem.