Review of Robot Robbery by Keith Koshman, 2003
Written by Lachie Dazdarian(March, 2005)
This platform game arrived in 2003. after a couple of years of on and off development and despite it didn't feature many levels, spectacular graphics or anything new in any perspective it was well received. If you want to find out why, keep reading.
Graphics
Keith did a very nice and even job with the graphics. Despite the EGA look of it all tiles and sprites blend and fit nicely with one another. The game graphics could use more colors and shades but there is nothing bad I can say about the look of the game beside that. The main menu screen and story intro jump slightly above the quality of the level graphics. Jeff(our hero) is animated satisfactory, with a cool "eye-blinking" effect but a better animation of Jeff's death would be nice. We can say the same for the enemy sprites but the lack of more than two types of enemies inside the game ruins my impression a bit.
Sound/Music
Keith wrote in the readme file that he implemented PC Speaker sound effects but since my computer doesn't feature PC Speaker I was not able to hear anything. Sorry, but I doubt I would give anything more that 1 in this category even if I've heard those "sound effects".
Gameplay
Robot Robbery is a standard platform game. Jeff doesn't carry any kind of weapon so you kill enemies by jumping on them(like in Super Mario). Despite the tile by tile scrolling playing Robot Robbery is quite enjoyable. The physics are very simple so jumping on small platforms is not frustrating. What can be frustrating is that you die by a single touch of an enemy after which Jeff(you) returns to the BEGINING of the level. Anyway, the shortness of the game limits the gameplay quite a lot. It's hard to know how much this kind of concept and game engine would work in a larger game.
Story
Perhaps Robot Robbery deserves straight 5 in the story section but since the game hasn't got a proper ending and the plot is a joke itself I can't give it more than 4. The story features Jeff, our hero, whose computer gets stolen by evil robots. Short ones, though. We follow him in his computer search quest. Doesn't sound like something special, right? Why do I give it 4 is the humor. Keith really has a great sense of humor. Everything, from the intro, story episodes between levels, even the credits and readme file is filled with excellent humor. The peak of this game.
Replay Value
Robot Robbery features only 3 levels. So it's very easy to remember everything inside the game. Once you finish it I doubt you'll ever want to repeat it. There is nothing you'll want to see or experience again. Also, the fact you can continue from the level you are in infinite times, after you lose all your lives, doesn't help a lot. It allows everyone to finish the game from the first try, if they are enough patient.
Challenge
Good. Levels are well designed. You will definetly lose all your lives playing this game. There are enough tricky parts and traps to make you try harder. Not too frustraing but not too easy. If only the game was longer. Then we could really talk on this topic.
Fun Factor
Only 2?!? Yes. This was a promising game but due the fact it contains so little I can't be very generous here. It's fun, but for short. I can't blame the developer much for this since the game was coded in QBasic 1.1(great acomplishment, by the way). What is done is done.
Total
16 / 35
Good: Great humor. Enjoyable graphics.
Bad: The game is too short. Tile by tile scrolling. No proper sound/music.