Angry Robots

Simple puzzles can be a great distraction when you are feeling particularly bored, especially if the mechanics are basic enough not to require a lot of learning. However, it’s important that the puzzles have clear answers, otherwise frustration kicks in too early. Video games can be a great medium for puzzles, mainly because they are very approachable.

Angry Robots is an arcade game in which the goal is to use a rolling robot to destroy all the bombs from each level. In order to do so, you can manipulate environmental objects by enlarging them or making them smaller, which creates instability and causes a chain reaction. Unfortunately, the physics are rather annoying, since they don’t always work as you would expect.

The levels get overwhelming soon after the tutorial, since you are never quite certain of what you should be doing. You can either make things smaller or bigger, but the mechanics rarely work as intended, since your robot gets stuck in almost everything if you don’t pay enough attention. The controls can be rather sloppy and annoying too, depending on how patient you are.

You have a limited number of moves at your disposal, which makes it even more difficult to experiment with various possibilities. You are constantly restarting and trying a different approach, which although may not be a bad thing in most games, it can get fairly infuriating here. To make things worse, you also have to struggle with imprecise controls and annoying physics.

Lastly, the graphics are fairly poor as well, although this wouldn’t be a problem if the gameplay was better. The background artwork is simple, the textures are even simpler, and the animations could use a lot of work. Moreover, the sounds are fairly basic too, making it difficult to keep the music on for more than a few minutes before you feel compelled to stop it.

All things considered, Angry Robots could have been a lot better with the proper amount of work and care, but the final version is very unpolished and annoying. Thus, it’s difficult to find any joy in the game when it works against you every step of the way.