Bot Net: Ramshackle Robotics
A downloadable game for Windows
Try out the demo for free!
We're bringing turn based strategy and programming together to create a unique and endlessly replayable strategy experience!
Features
- Delve into the easy to learn hard to master Behavior System! Inspired by the idea of bringing the fun of programming to a video game, the Behavior System offers you a simplified way to program and automate your bot's behaviours by mixing and matching 3 types of commands. The Behavior System offers tons of unique complexity in an easy to use, simple package!
- Build and upgrade your robot army with specialized bot upgrades, weapons, and items! By combining different bots with different kinds of gear, you can create powerful combinations! Want to use the Focus Beam, a weapon that deals more damage the further it is from it's target, to it's maximum potential? Give it to a Fast Bot with the Keep At Range command. Now you have a powerful bot who can quickly move far away to deal a bunch of damage!
- Every playthrough is different, with random bots, equipment, and behavior unlocks!
- Turn the tides of battle by gaining control of Stations; key locations that provide powerful bonuses and large scale effects! Make sure to capture all the Stations you can, as they provide a variety of effects like deadly Auto-Turrets, Teleporters, and 3D Printers for building more bots!
- All of the aliens use the same Behavior and Squad System as you! Outsmart your enemies by learning and exploiting their behaviors!
We've recently launched our Indiegogo campaign which has already received fantastic support and would be excited to have you join as well! If you'd like to support us or find out in detail the future plans for the game, click on the image below to reach the Indiegogo page!
Download
Install instructions
Unzip the folder wherever you'd like then open 'Bot Net Ramshackle Robotics.exe'
Development log
Comments
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I can't give a good mark to this game, although I'd love to love it.
Robots AI is my concern :
When I program my robots to "shoot on the deadliest enemy", I intend those robots to actually kill the deadliest enemy as soon as possible to quickly decrease the amount of damage done to my forces. So when there are 2 "deadliest enemies" in range, they should concentrate fire on one of them UNTIL DEATH.
But what they do is shooting at the deadliest enemy until this enemy's HP is down to close defeat (i.e. : 1 shoot from being down), then they turn to another "deadly enemy", keeping the enemy forces to full-damage-inflincting.
Moreover, when I change program from a robot to "go farthest from enemy", I don't intend this robot to charge the enemy forces.
Lots of enemy were on the right (east), not even one enemy were on the left (west). The bot could only go right or left... it choose the right, jumping right in the middle of the enemy force.
To my mind, this kind of AI is game-breaking.
I'm aware I've got no real control over my bots, but I would expect them to act logically, according to their programming and immediate surrounding.
Anyway, this game gives me a lot of hope, since I love its concept. Fix the AI to make it enjoyable and it will be a great game !
this game is great.
Great idea, i love it.
games fun and I have no complaints thank you very much dev man
Hi just checking, is this going to be Windows only or Linux too?
We're planning to support Linux in the future. Right now we're focusing on windows while we get through our crowdfunding campaign. We should hopefully have a Linux build available within a couple months.
Awesome! When you do, reach out to me here : https://www.gamingonlinux.com/
Played the tutorial, and I have to say. The idea is good, I enjoy the concept. However, the combat feels grindy and barebones, the turns take awhile, and more complexity introduced as the game goes on would be cool.
I know it's a demo and in the early stages though, so I know these things will be worked on.
Personal recommendations would be a turn unit style, where instead of one side goes, than the next, it'd be interesting to see turns play out in order of speed. That is, when you press the Execute Commands button, it goes in order of the fastest units (whether robot or alien) and so forth. Would open up ways to increase unit speed over surviability, more value to fast bodies, etc.
Another thing would be cover systems and miss chance. Cover systems aren't a necessity, but would be interesting to include as a feature as you learn the game's mechanics. Miss chance would make it less punishing for melee units on both sides.
Also, tying in with the turn unit thing, aliens shouldn't get a free turn when they leave their ships. That is, they shouldn't get to move and attack without threat, as they only appear after your robots end their turn.
Overall though, game's neat and I like it. Don't gotta take any of my recommendations, but I do hope considerations are made to improve combat. (also my partner thinks variation in the game music would be nice)
Thanks for the feedback! I'll make sure to keep your ideas in mind as we continue developing =)
I really enjoyed it. 2 solid hours of exciting gameplay, though as there's only one, non-randomly-generated level, not very much replayability, will definitely return when it's finished!
Glad to hear you enjoyed the demo!
Enjoyed! This thing kept me up until 12:00 AM because I have the time management skills of a middle-aged drunk chimp! It's awesome! Though I did start at 10:00 PM, so that's on me
Haha, I find that I'm always wanting to just see one more turn when I play and before you know it, you've been playing for hours! I'd like to think that's a sign that we made something good =)
Well, you did!
Nice game!
A Linux and Mac port would be nice but is not 100% needed.
If you don't want to have proper support or bug fixing for these platforms, just make it an unstable channel!
Thank you!
We do plan on supporting those platforms in the near future! Once our Indiegogo campaign has finished running we're going to be getting some new hardware to let us properly support them. Ideally we should start having proper builds in a month to a month and a half from now.
Awesome! Thank you for considering Linux
If you have a strong enough windows computer you could always test the mac and linux versions in a virtual machine
That's probably what we will do for Linux. For Mac, I couldn't figure out how to buy it's OS to use as a virtual machine and, as far as I can tell, the only way to get the OS is by buying a Mac computer. Either way, it will be nice to just have the proper machines to do it all on.
It would even be nice if you just made a port for Linux and/or Mac but label it as unstable so if it is just broken sometimes it is ok because otherwise you could never play the game on Linux or Mac in the first place.