2961

So far I love it. It’s a really nice way to explore the mechanics and get on to the next game. Almost a perfect marriage of price, time investment, and interesting decisions underneath the Chick Parabola.

About the only exception that crosses my mind is Keldon’s implementation of Race for the Galaxy, where the AI is very strong.
I’m pumped for this one.

I’ve got hundreds of hours into Ascension, for example, but only because I was willing to dip my toe into multiplayer. I’d have shelved it right away and never purchased any of the expansions if I quit when I mastered the relatively weak single player game.
Ascension is nice because async multiplayer is so fast, although I lost interest in the league when the optimal decisions became too routine. Still, I just paid $1 to play around with an expansion set against the AI for an hour.

Further, I’d say that to succeed, the game has to be work well with asynchronous play, and async play has to be well implemented. That’s why Eclipse died. It’s a very well done adaptation of a highly-talked about boardgame, but it was not only ill-suited to async, the multiplayer implementation of async was terrible. The devs seemed to have no clue that players needed to see other player’s moves, and if they were waiting around, they needed to be able to look at things when someone else was playing, rather than being completely locked out.
I quit iOS multiplayer after I became too obsessed with checking for new moves – like social media OCD times 10 – but your point here is why I’m not too broken up about it for most of these games anyway.

2962

I’ve actually turned off notifications for the async games I’m playing (like Ascension and Star Realms) because it’s just too much. Now I just check the icon counter whenever I’m using the phone/tablet anyway and I’m still able to finish all my league games that way.

2963

(regarding Trouble With Robots):

I coulda sworn it said Chapters 2 and 3 were free yesterday or the day before, but you’re right, it’s only Chapter 2 now.

2964

It did, that was only for a day or so. I almost feel bad for getting both for free. Best game I have played in a while.

2965

There’s a lot of stuff I don’t like about the Trouble With Robots. Mainly that it feels highly, highly dependent on luck. For most of the 1st level, it’s easy enough that it really doesn’t matter what order you draw cards, but once you start getting into the levels where you can actually lose, it’s common to lose just because you drew the wrong cards for the first couple of rounds.

For example, in scenarios where you start badly outmatched, you absolutely must draw some decent reinforcements in round 1. There’s an optional scenario where you start with 3 elves vs. 3 trolls. It’s possible to draw support troops or nothing but healing instead. That’s stuff you need once your force is built up, but it’s bad to draw it all in the first couple of rounds.

I’m playing through, and I think I’m near the end, but overall it’s felt kind of marginal.

2966

Are you talking about chapter 1 or later? I found chapter 1 to be extremely easy on the medium setting.

2967

Although I agree that there is a lot of chance in your early draws, it is possible to get through that 3 elves vs 3 trolls fight with no losses without casting any spells. You need to get a bit lucky, but I can do it about 20% of the time, and another 70% I can pass it losing one unit. And when you get hosed on the early draws, at least it’s early in the level and it doesn’t cost you a lot of time.

Where does chapter 2 start? I finished the main game (afaik) and it unlocked limited mode and there’s a green icon to start chapter 3 on the map, but I can’t find chapter 2.

2968

Chapter 2 stars with the first mission in the city. Chapter 3 starts with the first mission after you beat the end boss for chapter 2.

Right now, I’m stuck on the very first mission of chapter 3, because I keep failing it.

The thing about getting hosed on early draws is that even if you live, you’re probably still screwed for the rest of the scenario. The game is about a snowball growth effect, where your army gets bigger and bigger as the waves progress. Every unit you don’t draw in wave 1 is a unit you don’t have for waves 2, 3, etc. Once it gets hard, you need to get the exact mix of units and healing that will keep your growth up and your losses low so you have a huge army for the final big waves.

For the final boss of chapter 2, I went with a strategy focused on lots of peasants with HP boosted by Forge Workers and Glory. This failed miserably a couple of times, dying out around wave 9 or 10, before winning spectacularly with lots of troops left over. When chance can swing your results so much, it’s hard to tell whether you have an effective strategy and are just getting poor draws or if you need to change your card choices.

2969

I think there’s more strategy to The Trouble With Robots than I first thought. I finally managed to beat the Dragon Top optional mission, and I did it in a manner that seemed very specific to the alternating waves of trolls and dragons. Namely, I tried to build a force that could kill the dragons before they started fighting - those 100 point lightning bolts they throw were quickly slaughtering everything.

My idea was to go as close to all-ranged as I could manage, and use ranged damage boosters (Tactician, Invigorate) and Slow Motion to give me as much damage as possible before the dragons reached melee range. Even though the lightning bolts strike anywhere, the dragons don’t throw them until they’re meleeing something. Since the dragons could kill most stuff very rapidly, I dropped most healing, excepting Centuar Shamans which I was taking anyway because they have a ranged attack. The deck included Duplicate, which I used to duplicate either Slow Motion or Invigorate when possible.

The result was hardly assured, since bad draws still screwed me a few times, but I didn’t stall out on wave 10 as I did with other mixes, and eventually it worked. When I drew the right cards, I slaughtered most waves very rapidly, rapidly enough that the 20 second Invigorate / Tactician bonuses often carried over substantially into the next wave.

This is not an approach that I’d think would work on any other level.

2970

I really like Panzer Corps. Finally gave in and bought it at 9.99, played for a few hours then spent 39.99 to get the rest of the dlc.

Very very very good so far

2971

Hey guys! I’m the primary developer working on Trouble With Robots on iOS and Android. I ended up here, because I noticed the discussion of our newly released game. I’d really like to know what people thing and if there are any questions/comments. The iTunes reviews have been amazing so far, but it’s been very slow to get noticed anywhere. I really appreciate that you guys have noticed, so I figured I’d chime in.

2972

I’ve warmed to it, though as people around here know, I’m generally pretty hard to please.

When I got stuck, which was fairly often once I got into chapter 2, I searched online for discussions. Unfortunately if you’re stuck, there’s almost nothing out there. I did learn that it was originally a Windows game by Digital Chestnut, and that the port was done by someone else. I have to say the production values in the iOS version are much better than in the Windows original, the original art was marginal at best.

Most of my objections are design issues - mainly, I’d like to be able to mulligan the initial hand. It’s common to have levels that demand you to have at least 3 damage / healing spells in your deck, but have very limited forces initially, so if you draw 3 spells and no summons for the first wave, you’re hosed. The level where you have 1 peasant at game start comes to mind.

Initially, I had the bad feeling this was another Fremium game, because the currency for card upgrades is Stars, and Stars are the most common name for purchased currency in Fremium games. Eventually it became clear it was strictly a game currency, and the only thing you purchased were additional levels.

If you’re going through a second time in Limited mode, checking progress is inconvenient. If you lose a level, and losing a level is common on the harder levels when you have a random mix of cards, you get thrown out to the main map. That’s very busy once you’ve done all 3 chapters, and finding correct spot to tap often means holding the “upgrades” button so you can see the trophies and see what’s next in Limited mode. Having an option to re-try a level when losing would help some, but mostly it would be nice to be enable a “limited” mode globally on the map that showed progress like the original story mode.

Some special status items don’t have an indicator. I didn’t see one for the Speedster time limit, though I might have missed it. Stun time with Spite doesn’t have a timer icon like Squall or Slow Motion.

I’d love some sort of micro-histogram for health status in addition to minimum health. The “minimum health” display can be good, but it can be hard to tell in a hurry when Heal will give a bigger bang than a smaller healing effect. This is particularly true when there’s a big scrum and it’s impossible to make out health bars in the jumble.

2973

Hey Gus! Thanks for all the great feedback!

I don’t want to quote your whole message, but rest assured that I will be adding it to our internal list of items to analyze/tweak/fix.

The suggestion about the limited mode “retry” option was one I heard from a tester right before release (too late to act upon), so it’s one that’s been ruminating in my mind lately. His take on it was slightly different, but the result is basically probably the same. To me, just personally, I think this is probably the tweak that adds the most from a user perspective while causing the least stress from a programming and game redesign perspective.

The hand mulligan idea is interesting, too. It somewhat goes with this retry idea.

I’m intrigued by your “micro-histogram health display” idea, but I don’t feel like I quite understand what you are thinking of. If there was a better way to display the overall army need to heal (instead of or in addition to just the least healthy ally), I’d be interested in exploring it. I just haven’t figured that one out, yet. One thing that I think doesn’t quite work is to show an overall health meter (totaling up all the current/max of your whole army) in place of the least-healthy display, as it doesn’t really show an immediate need for healing. How could we pair the information into a concise display?

Really, it all depends on what your goal is for the level/situation. Usually (especially early on), a player’s goal is to not lose any units (and obtain more stars). That’s where the “least healthy ally” display really helps.

My job right now is to get the Android version ready. It is very playable, but there are some tweaks/additions that need to be made for that platform. Then, I feel like I can focus on improvements (assuming there are people that are playing and upgrading).

I love all the feedback. From what I’ve seen, people that play it REALLY like it. I just need to figure out how to get more people to try it. That’s really tough for me, since I’m mainly a programmer (not a marketing expert).

2974

Ive done the first chapter, this is really fun, its a great game :)

2975

I’m suggesting an additional health display, rather than replacing lowest health, which you always want to know. A histogram showing # of units with various health levels from 10% to 100%. I did a quick mockup showing what it might look like with 20% of the population per bar.

jfJ2Unx.jpg800×600

The concept needs a little work, since if it’s sized the same as the existing health display, “20% of your units have 80% health” ends up being a fairly short bar, and hard to see. For example, it could be scaled in some fashion, such as logarithmically, so small bars are more visible than a straight linear graph. It only needs to convey the sense of the health distribution of the army, rather than precise numbers.

2976

Another thing that crossed my mind - I wish the card detail mentioned health and attack strength. The casual player may not care, but when the robots start showing up with armor in chapter 3, it would be nice if it were clear which units had a serious problem with the armor.

2977

Touch Arcade just released a review of Trouble With Robots.


It would be awesome if anyone that’s been playing this added to the comments there.

I definitely get what you’re going for a lot better, now. I really like the information you’re trying to show here. I will have to really think about how best to display it, as I do think it’s useful (if properly conveyed).

Hmmm. This is another that I will make note of. One thing I’ve wanted to do is to come up with some sort of icon language to describe the cards. An example is pretty easily done for some of the summon cards, where, for example, the “Peasants” card might have a 3 and then the peasant icon. This is still something on my list of things to re-visit as things progress, and I will add your suggestion to the notes around this.

2978

Anyone playing Vainglory? I have fiddled with it some and it seems like fun if you like MOBA’s. Haven’t dropped any money for any characters. Will likely just save up the in game cash until I can buy a character that ends up being a favorite.

2979

I just got a new iPad Air 2 and one of the first games I played was TWR. Overall I’d say I really enjoyed it - played through the entire first chapter on Hard, and though I failed a few battles I was able to try different strategies and beat the levels without too much trouble.

I think the concept is great - I really like the mix of deckbuilding with the strategy of playing out your hand, deciding when to try to hold onto a card and trying to decide if you should go for a direct attack. It’s enough activity to make you feel involved, but not so much that you feel frantic. I love the gameplay!

I only have some minor issues with the game - really minor in the great scheme of things. Lots of typing but I’m wordy - there are all minor issues.

  1. When starting the game, why do I have to backspace over the name “Player 1” before typing my name? Why not start with the proposed name selected so I can just start typing my name in (and actually, now that I think about it, is it possible to insert your GameCenter name instead of “Player 1” if there are no profiles for the game? That seems like a reasonable guess for the first profile’s name).

Interestingly enough, I tried to create a second profile just now and it did insert my GameCenter name in the field (but I swear it didn’t do it for the first profile!). It should still select the text field so you can type of it without selecting anything though.

  1. I don’t particularly like the menu button on the middle of the right side. I would much prefer it in the upper right. The reason is, middle right is (more) easily hit by accident than the upper part of the screen. Also the upper part of the screen is a typical place for out of the way UI elements.

  2. When building your deck it’s difficult to see what’s selected. I know there is text on the right of the screen indicating how many choices you have left, but I find myself scanning the cards over and over to see which ones have the green triangle lit up. I can’t imagine it’s easier when there are 40 cards to choose from. It seems like it’d be more convenient if there was a “staging” are of some sort, where the cards you have tentatively selected assemble - on the bottom or on the side, wherever it makes sense - so when you select a card, it would move to the staging area, and you’d see your deck as you build it - that way you could scan them and see “yeah, I have 4 cards selected, but no heal, ok, let me find a heal in my card pool and select that.”

  3. I only played Chapter 1, but it seems that the Fireball card becomes much less useful once you get the Lightning Bolt. The Lightning Bolt seems strictly superior. If that’s a design decision (early cards can be rendered obsolete) that’s fine (or if I missed some strategy here, that’s ok too!), but it seems like if there was a way to upgrade that card, it might be useful in the right situation (or maybe there are cards that amplify fireball damage that I’m just not aware of).

  4. The sales job on Chapters 2 and 3 is a bit lacking. It would be nice to spend a little more screen real estate on them and show, for example, what cards you would be getting, what troops you’ll use, what robots you’ll fight… some sort of marketing other than a gray button.

  5. If you try to purchase an additional chapter then cancel the itunes dialog, the popup you return to has only a “Retry” button on it so you can retry the purchase. There is no way to cancel that popup though so the only way to go back to the game seems to be to force quit it and re-launch.

Promise I’m buying the chapter 2 and 3 bundle soon!

2980

I played through all of Trouble With Robots, finished all the levels in chapters 1-3 on both normal and Limited except Clean Up. Clean Up took me a couple of days to manage with a careful selection of cards, there was no way I was doing it with a random set. Similarly, I unlocked all the cards except the one you get for finishing Clean Up with no healing cards.

I ended up deleting it because I didn’t want the temptation of returning to try those again after beating my head against that level. It typifies what I don’t like about the design - namely, that if the level is difficult enough, you absolutely must draw the correct cards nearly every time. Clean Up features a huge ramp up in enemy power, and the only way to deal with some waves is an instant-kill on the swarms of ranged droids, such as Corrosion + Turn the Tide (does a total of 40 points to everything). If you don’t draw a pair like that for that wave, you die.

In some limited situations, Fireball is better. Lighting does 100 points, but only to half the robots on screen. Fireball does 60 damage, but it does it to 100% of the robots in the area of effect. You can kill all the robots in a wave instead of half of them if they’re bunched up and have less than 60 HP each, such as the ranged People Management Units.

In practice, though, I almost never took Fireball late in the game, much as I never took the Peasants card once better summons became available.