#puzzle bots

Excellent games, tho playing them in that order made me experience one hell of a mood whiplash. Puzzle bots is cute and fun, while the Shivah starts dark and gets even darker by the end.

"I'm not gonna sew your tie onto your shirt!"

"Aw- buh- Please? It's how I've always had it done!"

"No, that's so tacky!" Two men stood in a tailor shop close to closing time. The man behind the counter had his brow furrowed, staring at the man across from him in disbelief. "Can't you go somewhere else to get that done?"

"Your tailor shop is the only place that's open this late that's close! Please, Mr. Mallone, I just need this done!" The customer was getting increasingly distressed as this went on. "I'm desperate here!"

Genre: Adventure Developer: Ivy Games Price: £3.49

Despite the misleading title, Puzzle Bots isn't a puzzle game but is instead a point and click adventure game in which you control a group of tiny robots who break out of their test environments to wander off and have adventures. Whilst you initially begin with two robots: Hero, who has the ability to pick things up and Ultrabot, who has the ability to push larger items around, the roster of controllable characters soon expands to a total of five, adding the flamethrower-equipped Kelvin, bomb-throwing Bombchelle and the mermaid-like Ibi who has the ability to tow things around under water. Each of the game's stages requires the player to switch between a combination of these characters, utilising and combining the available abilities in order to solve a series of short, locational puzzles in a variety of interesting settings.

But whilst the puzzle design is excellent, the rest of the package is considerably less so. Visually the game has a rather 'early 2000s webcomic' look to it, with a character style that appears to ape Ctrl-Alt-Del artist Tim Buckley's already rather poor graphical style. Much like that author's work the game's human-dominated main plot stars Zander, a clumsy, idiotic robotic engineer who, despite the fact that there is incredibly little to actually like about him as a character, has the cast's two women practically throwing themselves at him as if he was Brad Pitt. Everything involving this love triangle is written in a clichéd and ham-fisted way, with the shy Yuriko being beaten to the punch by new girl (or grrl, considering that she's a ridiculous punk stereotype decked in various shades of pink) Astrid. Meanwhile token black guy Theo and Comic Russian guy don't really have much use rather than as set dressing, and suspicious boss Dr. Hugo functions as a really obvious and uninteresting villain.

Whilst there are some genuinely funny jokes nestled between the pointless romantic subplot and awkward mystery plot, the game is full of  cringeworthy moments, horrible characterisation and at least one full-blown deus ex machina so bad that it made me want to drive my skull through the desk whilst I was playing. And whilst the puzzles are brilliantly designed and rather entertaining to play, players must also expect poor hand-drawn graphics (and even worse animation), and some absolutely awful voice acting to go with that. There's definitely some good features of Puzzle Bots, but it tries much too hard to be a situation comedy focusing on it's human cast and spends far too little time with the true stars of the piece, the robots themselves.