Wadjet Eye Games’ Puzzle Bots [Review]

Guest Post by Sean Kennedy

I’ve had some sort of hunger for adventure games lately. I played the heck out of the Monkey Island games on the iPad but I still wanted more. Luckily, Wadjet Eye Games hooked me up with a copy of Puzzle Bots to play to my heart’s content. So I did what any gamer of my caliber would do — I played the ever living crap out of it.

Characters
As the player, you take the role of Hero initially, one of four other robots. Let me explain a little bit about each of the little guys, I think it’ll give a good amount of insight in to the kinds of situations you’ll find yourselves in.

First, you’ve got Hero. He’s your typical “Hero” character. He leads the other bots around and pretty much always wants to go on adventures. When playing as him, you have the ability to pick up and drop items.

Then there’s Ultrabot. He’s strong. Very strong. He’s the shy one in the group and he just follows Hero around for lack of anything better to do. You can use him to push things around in order to solve some of the puzzles.

Let’s not forget about our mechanical mermaid, Ibi. She’s a little waterproof “Hero” of sorts. She does in the water what Hero does on land. She can manipulate items with her hands, and she can also tow items around. This comes in handy on more than one occasion, especially when you need to move items on to dry land.

Kelvin is for all of you firebugs out there. He’s pretty much a flamethrower with legs which is absolutely fine by me. There was really a lot of thought put in to how useful he would be. I’ve found myself using him to heat water, evaporate water and yes, also burn things.

Last but not least, we’ve got Bombchelle. She’s the final robot that you are able to use. She’s a little punk rocker bot who tosses bombs around like nobody’s business. Her look is very reminiscent of roller derby girls — she even has a set of roller-blades.

Story
Without going in to too many details (I don’t want to spoil the experience for anyone), Puzzle Bots is super entertaining. The story is more than a little obvious but I really enjoyed watching all of the characters interact with one another. Even though it mostly focuses on the little robots and what they’re up to, they somehow still managed to put some emphasis on their owners as well. I found myself going through the motions occasionally just to find out what would happen next.

Artwork
The artwork added a good deal to the overall experience — it’s absolutely adorable. The animation could have used some work though. It felt very choppy to me. Maybe it’s what they built the game in, I’m not really sure. I just wish it was a bit smoother. It would have added to the immersion factor.

Final Thoughts
As an indy game, Puzzle Bots succeeds in all the right places. I really enjoyed playing it and I absolutely would recommend that anyone interested in adventure games give this one a try. If I had to rate this game on a scale of 1-10, I’d give it a solid 7.

Puzzle Bots by Wadjet Eye Games
Price: $5, Downloadable
www.wadjeteyegames.com/puzzlebots.htm