Bots Are Stupid

Yes, they are. You have to code the bots to travel through the level, but its mostly trial and error due how basic some instructions are. The direction you walk, the jump timing, the wait periods, grappling hook direction. Its a bit interesting at first, but soon enough you find out that this whole thing stinks. The tutorial bot tries to use the same mechanics to animate itself before the level, and on 3 out of 5 levels I had played, the bot couldn't jump to the right spot or stop in time and died, so I didn't had a tutorial on that level. Reloading or restarting the cutscene didn't work, it always fell out of the level or slid out of a platform and exploded. Eventually it becomes micromanaging wait timers and rules to get precise jumps, so its less programing and more trial and error, luck and praying the code will work. ... Actually, I take that back. It just programming. Honestly, I don't want to "program" a bot to make a jump if I will have to guess that only a 0.3 second wait, followed by a grapple hook with a 0.2 wait followed by a left jump will be right for it to work. Its not a puzzle if you have to brute force it.

TL;DR: Interesting concept but it gets old far too fast for what it could be, and the advertisement is misleading enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth. Despite all the talk that "It's Mario Maker with coding", this is a TAS-ing game thorugh and through. There is no logic puzzle to solve, it's all a question of finding perfect values to wait for. And more importantly, there is nothing there that could make it a real programming game, there are no real inputs and everything is deterministic. The two ways to finish a level are to hard code all the wait durations as constant time values, or use the macros and make the robot wait for some given time that will turn out to be constant since everything is deterministic. If you want to optimize for time, this becomes an even bigger issue as the given shortcuts to wait while precise are not always useful (with the exception of wait until hooked; unhook being really strong), and if you want to offset from them by even a single frame you need to just use a wait command either way. Optimizing for number of instructions is interesting, but not really fulfilling IMO, I did it for the first few levels and then dropped it to go fast.

Bots Are Stupid is a short but surprisingly challenging puzzle platformer where you guide little bots through deadly obstacle courses by giving them simple commands. The twist is that the bots follow your instructions exactly as given – even if that leads them straight into danger. The minimalist artstyle is clean and functional, keeping the focus on the puzzles themselves. The atmosphere is lighthearted, but the gameplay can get quite tricky, especially in later levels where timing and precise planning become crucial. Trial and error is a big part of the experience, but solving a level feels very rewarding once everything finally clicks. There are 32 achievements, which require completing all levels and tackling optional challenges. I reached 100% completion in 10.6 hours. I paid 1,91 € on sale, which is more than fair for the amount of content and the clever puzzle design. Overall, it was a fun and frustrating puzzle experience – if you enjoy logic-based challenges, experimenting with solutions, and watching bots fail in funny ways, this game is definitely worth checking out.

This game tries to be a unique turtle scripting game, but it feels extremely basic and limited when you realize it's much better to just bump wait timers by 0.1 until you complete the puzzle. There are some good conditional concepts like wait until / while / while not, but a movement platformer is just not a good medium for them, especially when this game encourages you to micromanage for speed or achievements. You will really only use THREE commands to make arbitrary guesses as to what wait delays will be faster. To be honest, I don't think this game would be much different if it just came without scripting like this at all. Games like TIS-100 accomplish this much better and they also encourage faster, shorter, or different programs.

Definitely has a lot of trial and error that becomes boring very quickly. Some people might enjoy this, though.

I'm not too far into the game yet, but after finding my footing in the first couple levels of introduction, I've had a blast iterating on my programs to sling my little bot around each corner as quickly as possible to shave time off the clock and climb the rankings for each level. You can of course just write a program that completes the level and then move on, but I couldn't help myself spending time optimizing each corner in a level, finding the perfect hook spot, getting the exit timing just right to set up a perfect entry angle to the next corner, and having little eureka moments when I've discovered new ways to utilize the movement mechanics to quickly build up or slightly alter momentum. For background, in the past I've spent a worrying amount of time in racing games, running the same circuits repeatedly to find the optimal path over the road and learning the quirks of different vehicles to squeeze every second out of the clock that I can manage. This game scratches the same itch; if you enjoy iterating and optimizing your times, I bet you'll get some kick out of it. While I don't seem to be finding any different bots to control yet, the apparently simple movement physics can be toyed with in ways that you just can't do with your own hands on the controls at real time; I can build an optimal path through the level and make small tweaks until I find a sweet spot. I can't wait to eventually go back to the beginning and apply what I've learned to the same levels I'm playing now. From here are some things that I feel could be improved or added to make the experience better. It's possible I'm not far enough into the game yet to unlock some things, but I'll try to adjust the review if I find that some of this exists later in the progression. During the first few levels it seems like the only way to finish is by guessing wait timings repeatedly on each corner until you happen upon the right time, but you do gain the ability to wait a specific number of frames - which, paired with the frame counter as you step through time, seems to lower the amount of guesswork required. However, it does still feel like I'm missing some way other than raw timing to make decisions on when to perform actions. It's possible I just haven't encountered this yet, but I find myself wishing that the bot could detect more about its surroundings than simple state changes by touch. Maybe a way to raycast in a direction to determine how far away a wall is, or determine how far the bot is from the edge of the platform it stands on, stuff like that. It could be a nice feeling to program a bot to "intelligently" beat a level by responding to its surroundings in more ways than simple touch or state changes. Strictly tailoring the bot's behavior and timings to the specific level layout makes the bot feel a bit disconnected from its world. Rather than "teaching" the bot how to complete the level on its own thanks to your instructions, it feels a bit more like holding the robot's hand at each moment from start to finish; your bot would be helpless if any corners or platforms were to be moved by even an inch because its timings are all hard-coded. It's also possible I'm too early to have encountered it yet, but I do find myself missing out on a way to write methods that I could call upon later in the script. The existing set of commands is very simple, at least so far as I've seen, but I still find myself writing similar patterns repeatedly that could have been replaced with a method call to make my code far more readable and easier to manipulate. It has led to me tweaking the wrong timings in my code because every part of the program reads roughly the same at a glance. It would be neat to see the current velocity of the bot while stepping through time, to more precisely understand the effect of our actions beyond eyeballing whether it looks faster or slower. Again, I'm loving what I've played so far and it's possible I simply haven't yet progressed far enough to have encountered the solutions to my suggestions above. I'll update the review more as I move on; until then these are more like first impressions than a review of the entirety of the game.

[h1]🔰Bots Are Stupendous🔰[/h1] - В мире, где нейросети уже пишут стихи и создают картины, способные покорить искусствоведов, [b]Bots Are Stupid[/b] предлагает нам вернуться к истокам. К примитивному, незамутнённому ничем, интеллекту в разы более примитивному, ну и написанию кода (не менее примитивному к слову) для оного. Но действительно ли это возвращение к истокам, или просто халтурная попытка выехать на ностальгии по старым добрым временам, когда и бот был зеленее, и код был чистым, аки родниковый источник? Ну и самое главное — весело ли все это? Об этом мы и поговорим в рамках моего обзора, не смею больше тянуть, приятного чтения. [h2]Об игре:[/h2] - [b]Bots Are Stupid[/b] с точки зрения игрового процесса представляет собой симулятор программирования (сам в шоке, что такой жанр игр существует), где вы должны писать код для управления ботами и решения различных задач, которые игра будет подкидывать в рамках отдельных уровней. Сами же уровни представляют из себя лабиринт, через который и требуется довести бота из точки А в точку Б. - Управление ботами осуществляется при помощи упрощённого визуального языка программирования с командами типа «иди налево», «иди направо», «остановись» и т. д. Глупость же ботов заключается в их тупому следованию командам, если вы направили его направо, то он до упора или своей гибели будет идти направо, если не прописать ему что-то ещё. - Уровень сложности в игре самый разный есть как очень простые уровни так и очень комплексные и сложные уровни к которым приходится постоянно адаптироваться и искать нестандартные решения.Но в общем и целом в игре 4 компании с уникальным набором механик так что даже компанию можно подобрать под себя. - При этом игра ещё и достаточно реиграбельна,вы можете как играть в стандартные уровни пытаясь довести свой код до идеала чтоб быть первым в таблице лидеров по количеству строк кода и времени прохождения (в обоих случаях чем меньше тем лучше) так и создавать уровни самостоятельно или скачивать уровни других пользователей. - С точки зрения музыкального и звукового сопровождения игра тоже хороша. За целую кучу часов музыка не бесит, звуки не раздражают, да и думать не мешают, что для инди уже уровень. Не Ханс Циммер, конечно, но пойдёт. [h2]Мегадуэ Негатив[/h2] - Как и любая другая игра [b]Bots Are Stupid[/b] не идеальна,в чём же она не идеальна?Об этом и поговорим: 🔷 [b]Bots Are Stupid[/b] примитивна — игре катастрофически не хватает инструментария, чем дальше вы проходите игру, тем больше игра напоминает симулятор задержки ввода, а не программирования. 🔷 [b]Bots Are Stupid[/b] репититативна — когда на одном уровне вы сидите уже не первый час и тупо забиваете задержку ввода в 10 разных местах, а на следующем уровне делаете то же самое. Сами понимаете, разнообразием тут и не пахнет. 🔷 [b]Bots Are Stupid[/b] сложна — если вы, как и я, в этом вашем программировании не разбираетесь от слова совсем, то даже в столь упрощённую версию языка программирования вникать нужно не 1 час. Да, вы будете делать это в процессе, да, игра предоставит вам целый ворох внутриигровых статей для изучения, но это всё время, которого лично у меня не так много, как хотелось бы, да и для каждого инди его не напасешься. 🔷 [b]Bots Are Stupid[/b] визуально слаба — местный пиксель-арт, как и визуал в целом, не впечатляет, понятно, что это такой вот минимализм, чтоб ничего не отвлекало, и всё же, когда глазу ну совсем не за что зацепиться, это тоже не очень. [h1]🔰Вывод:🔰[/h1] - [u][b]Bots Are Stupid[/b] – это игра, которая, несмотря на свои недостатки, оставляет двоякое, но скорее положительное впечатление. Это попытка вернуться к истокам программирования, к примитивным алгоритмам и задачам, но стоит ли оно того лично для меня? Скорее да, чем нет. Тем же, кто после обзора до сих пор в раздумьях, скажу, что не стоит ждать от игры откровений или революционных механик. Это скромный, но увлекательный симулятор программирования, который подойдет тем, кто ищет нестандартный способ убить время, попутно попробовав себя в упрощённом виде программирование. Тем же, кто в этом деле уже не первую собаку съел, здесь делать нечего, вам лучше обратиться к другим играм данного жанра, такие дела.[/u]