What’s the world’s fascination with bots?  Do we see a future where most machines will take over tasks we find mundane, boring, or dangerous.  Or Tiny droids that will enter our bodies and repair us or augment us?  Virtual pets or companions where the real thing is just not practical or safe?  All these things and more.  I think we’re mostly in convenience.  So what are the main sources of bot love?  Firstly Star Wars, with those loveable droids C-3PO and R2-D2.  Ever since the late 70’s they’ve been ingrained into our consciousness.  Movies, cartoons, toys, even cereal has had these two little guys.  We can hardly think of a world without them.  Secondly, the Japanese.  Their love of technology has spearheaded efforts to make robots, walk, talk, and even think, and inspired the world’s culture.  Granted things like Transformers was a Japanese and American co-creation, there’s no doubt about the influence the Japanese had on them.  In fact it was a Japanese toy line that some guys from Hasbro bought, and based a whole franchise around.  Okay with that spirit I present my next review for a game called G.W.A.T. which stands for a Game Without A Name.

What I think of it:  GWAT needs a lot more work done on it before it can be thought to be fun. Edit:  After playing it a little bit more I started getting the hang of it.  It’s not really a bad game, but there are some things that could be improved.  More after the break.

The Break.

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Here’s an interesting and original game.  It’s called the Triumph of Time by muku for the Ludum Dare 48 hour compo #14.  Place pylons around a sun to build up barriers against a purple anti-matter cloud.  The only thing that can stave off this onslaught of the ‘purple cloud’ are particles through each of the barriers using the pylons.  The only way to get the particles is by placing pylons around a sun.  Place pylons by left clicking.  Space to pause/un-pause.  You can also scroll and zoom.  The graphics are somewhat abstract but makes you think of older games that didn’t have the graphics power.  I could see this game run on old consoles and computers if the author chose to write it for them.  There’s some background music, but apparently not really any sound.  The version I played was the post-competition version, where the author added a tutorial mode and a level editor.  The thing is very very simple to play but is also very difficult to master.  I couldn’t even finish the first tutorial level.  Thankfully, the first actual level is a little more forgiving, probably because of the shape of the game board which can differ from level to level.  I still didn’t “win’” in the sense of actually accomplishing the goal of the level (save 60 quadrants) but I did manage to save something like 35 or 36.  If he could ramp the difficulty way down I think it would be a really fun game.

Name: Triumph of Time

Developer: muku