By Jim Rossignol on August 4th, 2008 at 4:46 pm.
When naming a game it’s worth taking note of some modern innovations in naming technique, like Choke on my Groundhog, YOU BASTARD ROBOTS. I’d have called it “YOU ROBOT BASTARDS,” because I think that rolls off the tongue a little better. Anyway, that’s the name of the latest mini-game from Kloonigames, and it’s a beautifully scribbled Robotronalike. Direct download here, it’s about 7mb. It’s furiously paced, and reminds me of the many hours I spend playing another more classically-titled videogame and one of the greatest multiplayer creations of all time.
04/08/2008 at 17:00 Diogo Ribeiro says:
I’m close to leaving work, will check it later.
04/08/2008 at 17:16 material defender says:
Maybe it’s just that I’ve wasted too many hours fighting against poorly documented statistical plotting routines today, but I’m digging this whole graph-papery style to this BASTARD ROBOT genocide.
Arguably the only way RPS could make me happier is if the next post contains some kind of free-beer plugin gubbin thing for my browser.
04/08/2008 at 17:57 Dolphan says:
That last link is dead.
04/08/2008 at 18:01 heliocentric says:
fuck space still holds the medal in my eyes. Because after dying in that game thats exactly how you feel.
04/08/2008 at 19:10 Diogo Ribeiro says:
Well, it’s a nice little time waster that reminded me of Smash TV as I’ve replayed that recently. The tropes are there – different colored enemies to signify them as harder to kill, small but powerful tanks – but the waves were somewhat dull and predictable (hey, not unlike some of Smash TV’s own waves).
I think the time reversal is by far the most interesting play mechanic.
04/08/2008 at 19:17 PleasingFungus says:
THAT WAS WONDERFUL.
How many levels are there? After the fourth or fifth one, the game seemed to bug up – it spawned me endlessly and told me “Level Cleared” after every time I spawned. Was there much more past that?
Otherwise it remains super wonderful.
04/08/2008 at 19:28 Diogo Ribeiro says:
What I’d like to see were the enemy creatures or waves being drawn into existence, possibly emerging from the background paper.
04/08/2008 at 19:39 Petri Purho says:
I’m glad to see that my efforts in innovating in game names haven’t gone to waste.
The game is quite short and somewhat lacky, but in my defense I have to say that it was created during a weekend. I made the game for the Assembly game development competition and it got the third place!
04/08/2008 at 19:46 Diogo Ribeiro says:
No need to defend it, it’s a nice game :) Suffice to say you’ve managed to do more in a weekend than I have in years :lol:
04/08/2008 at 19:50 Corion says:
That was cool. I wish the guys you saved did more than sit on the background. I also think it’s kind of cool that if you shoot certain enemies you can kill your other lives early due to an explosion not going off.
I think the game should give you like 5 lives. This means that if you die you can keep respawning until you have 5 corpses on the screen. When you “save” someone past when they were supposed to die, it should remove them from the game with a neat particle effect and give you a life credit.
Definitely fun. I’d like to see something with this gameplay in a more complex medium, like an FPS game. Perhaps if they live beyond the prerecorded lifespan they’d have AI take over.
04/08/2008 at 20:08 Vollgassen says:
ROBOT BASTARD!
http://www.robotbastard.com
pretty sure that’s why they didn’t call it you robot bastards
04/08/2008 at 20:15 Corion says:
Also, bonus points for having 40 of you on the screen with no corpses. It’s fun to kill and save yourself.
04/08/2008 at 20:48 Lunaran says:
More enemies and levels please. Mechanics that require multiple-play-coordination like that japanese 50-cursor thing would be really interesting to see in a shmup environment.
04/08/2008 at 21:55 Willy359 says:
Extreme Violence nostalgia! Speedy Boots for the win!
04/08/2008 at 22:17 terry says:
Holy crap I had forgotten the name of that game so bad I resorted to typing “game a bit like smash tv amiga” into google. Thanks!
04/08/2008 at 22:40 Jack Monahan says:
likely a consideration not to step on the toes of Rob Schrab’s ROBOT BASTARD
http://robotbastard.robschrab.com/
04/08/2008 at 23:35 Noc says:
Oh, man. The only thing more fun that shooting robots is shooting robots along with your past selves. What surprised me was that I got a really strong sense of cooperation, here; since the “landscape” of the level changes as robots get destroyed sooner and bullets hit other things, I found myself working with my past selves to try and score AOEs. It’s a great way of handling the “subpar-AI” issue, because, well, I know what I’m doing.
05/08/2008 at 00:44 FhnuZoag says:
Aw. I appreciated the fact there was no lives. The ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try try try again’ mechanic made the game more fun than if I had to retry levels due to sucking.
05/08/2008 at 07:05 Ben Abraham says:
This is a very important game! And what’s more fun than playing with yourself? ;-)
05/08/2008 at 08:28 Matt Dovey says:
Extreme Violence sucked up hours of my 8-year old life and I love it dearly. The gun with the bouncy doughnut things? Champion, every time.
This game is also awesome, even down to the bizarrely addictive 16-bit music that just drives you on. Cheers big ears!
05/08/2008 at 13:23 Shadrach says:
HAha, had a lot of fun with this one today. Many small fun games come out of the Scene, like last years’ Sumitori Dreams :)
05/08/2008 at 17:35 ikigeg says:
omg :D Extreme Violence! That was such an amazing game – spent hours hunkered over my friends amiga! bouncy bullets and the oh so triumphant all-the-way-across-map flukey kill!