The Trouble With Robots CCG

Tube

About the Game

The Trouble With Robots is a side-scrolling customisable card game. What does that mean? It means that the game is something like a cross between Magic: The Gathering and Plants vs Zombies. Actually it's unique and quite hard to describe, so on to the screenshots:



At the start of each wave allies (centaurs here) are on the left, robots are on the right, and you've got cards drawn from your deck at the bottom of the screen. The game is all about those cards, you have little 'direct' influence on the battlefield but believe me, using the right cards at the right times is critical! In this case the robots don't have very much health so they should be quite susceptible to that Fireball...



Yep!

As you complete levels you will unlock more cards and get to upgrade your deck, experiment with new toys and find combos. Before you know it, you'll be playing crazy battles like this one:



What Are People Saying?

The Trouble With Robots is still somewhat under the radar, but we've had some great reviews from the indie games press. For instance:

Game Informer
IndieGames.com
JayIsGames
Indie Love

Who Made It?

Most of the development and programming was done by me, Geoffrey White, over the course of about two years. I also had help from excellent artist Ben Jones and talented musician Matt Javanshir, and I owe a lot of thanks to various friends who tested the game, offered suggestions and helped to get the word out.

Can I Play?

Of course you can! You can download the demo or get the full version from our site or Get Games. And as an added bonus if you comment below, I'll send one lucky person a free copy of the game!

Have fun!

- Digital Chestnut

GeoffW

Congratulations to kime who has won a free copy of the game.

I forgot to mention that the game has a Steam Greenlight page. If you want the game to be on Steam (and perhaps one day feature in Steam sales etc) please vote for us there!

kime

Downloading the demo now. I like card games, so this looks interesting :P

lowlylowlycook

Likewise downloading the demo.

Tallweirdo

Downloaded the demo and played straight through then immediately went back and collected the 200 stars to unlock all the bonus cards. Enjoyed the writing and the tone.

One addition I would like to see is a meter showing the health of your lowest health unit to make it easier to know when to play healing cards. I missed out on a couple of perfects because I was watching the front line and didn't notice that one of my archers had been wittled down. Ideally the meter would be overlayed over any healing card the same way the number of peasants summoned is overlayed on a cave troll card when you have elven wardens in play.

lowlylowlycook

So I think I like this game. I like the battles (although medium difficulty seemed pretty easy). I liked the buttinski bureaucratic robots.

I'm just not sure of the price. In theory complaining about $15 seems dumb but in comparison to other indie games, bundles, steam sales, etc...

kime

Beat the demo. I thought hard difficulty provided a pretty good challenge. It was rather enjoyable, both gameplay and writing. Nice to look at, too.

I enjoyed finding different cool combos, and seeing how new cards would affect everything. Mass peasants with lots of buffs are fun :P

Gaardean

lowlylowlycook wrote: »

So I think I like this game. I like the battles (although medium difficulty seemed pretty easy). I liked the buttinski bureaucratic robots.

I'm just not sure of the price. In theory complaining about $15 seems dumb but in comparison to other indie games, bundles, steam sales, etc...

Played through the demo, and I really enjoyed it. I think I was most impressed by the humor, it actually seemed chuckle-worthy rather than how "canned" the jokes usually are in games like this. Gameplay was smooth, though it needs a few little tweaks (like the aforementioned "lowest health" indicator). I'm afraid I have to agree with Lowly on the $15 price tag, though. I feel like the game may be a bit content-light, my personal metric for buying games is usually that for every $1 I spend, I'd like about 1 hour of enjoyment (I may just be cheap, though...). The closest comparison I could think of is Defender's Quest, which is cheaper and seemed to be a bit more substantial. What plans for further development are there? I think even something like a keyboard-sharing co-op or vs. mode would validate the cost.

Drakhades

i like the demo, but i think your final "challenge" mode isn't good to keep in the demo, as I got very frustrated playing it. i kept playing until i got the hand-redraw card, but at that point, i didn't feel any need to play the game any further.

kime

GeoffW wrote: »

Congratulations to kime who has won a free copy of the game.

Thanks!

GeoffW

Thanks for the comments, some excellent points and they've all been noted.

I've been thinking about making a patch with some extra content (more levels, cards) as well as a few minor bug fixes - I've now decided to go ahead with this. The exact scope is yet to be determined so let me know if you've got any thoughts about what should be in it!

kime

And I have officially completed the story mode (although some of the levels proved too challenging for hard.... so far!)

I liked the story, as it was. A harrowing tale of love and redemption :P

GeoffW

I'd like to confirm that I'm now working on a free expansion, codename 'Megamort', which will contain 8 new story levels and 2 new challenge levels for the game as well as ... some number of new cards. The expansion will be available as a patch for new and existing customers in 4 - 8 weeks (hopefully).

kime

Excited to hear that!

Anyways, maybe found a bug? If you have centaurs out, and they want to shoot an arrow, but then you use the card that stops all ranged attacks for 10 seconds or whatever, they seem to get stuck in that "I want to shoot an arrow" mode, can't, so just stand there.

Then when it ends, they sometimes just shoot one arrow then go back into melee mode.

It would be nice, if there's something stopping them from ranged attacks, they just defaulted to melee. They look a bit silly otherwise :P

GeoffW

kime wrote: »

If you have centaurs out, and they want to shoot an arrow, but then you use the card that stops all ranged attacks for 10 seconds or whatever, they seem to get stuck in that "I want to shoot an arrow" mode, can't, so just stand there.

Well spotted - in fact, there's a rule making the centaurs switch to melee under Squall Charger but I'd messed up the logic. This will be fixed in the update.

kime

Cool.

One other thing that would be cool (but not essential) is the ability to look at your deck during the level. Sometimes I forget if I really forgot to include a healie card or if I'm just getting bad draws :P

GeoffW

I just thought I'd post to let you all know that the free Megamort expansion for The Trouble With Robots is finally out. New customers will get the expansion automatically, whereas if you already own the game you can download a patch to add the expansion here:

download patch

I can't resist showing off a few of the new things in the expansion, such as these cards:



And the new cave level:



There are 10 new levels in the expansion and they include a few fresh challenges for veteran players. That brings the total up to 32, plus there are 8 news cards (including some of my favourite designs actually), there's also a new music track from Matt and of course bug fixes. By popular demand I've also knocked the price down to just $9.99, so there really is no better time to start playing!

GeoffW

Accidental duplicate post, deleted.

GeoffW

The much awaited iOS version was released today. Everything is free today and tomorrow so hurry along to the app store!

Oh and we got some nice words from someone I look up to:

"Trouble With Robots is overdue for iOS. I hope that it gets the success and attention it deserves”
- Richard Garfield, Game Designer (Magic: The Gathering, King Of Tokyo)

kime

Awesome! Any idea how well it plays on a 4S? I'll try anyways, but curious if I should be hopeful or not.

GeoffW

It should work but it's possible it won't be super-smooth when there are lots of units on the screen. It's free, so try it and see!

GeoffW

I wasn't personally involved in the code for iPhone but on PC the game was most demanding when you summon > 100 peasants to your side at once, so if it struggles any time, it'll be then.