Design, build and wire up your own unique robot to complete challenging logic puzzles. LogicBots is a puzzle game where robots are used to complete the various levels.
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If you want to tinker with robots but don't have £800 to spend on robotics kits and a warehouse to try them out in, get this. No mess, no fuss, no rent-imperiling expense. Be warned: Apparently there are some people who don't enjoy spending two hours tinkering with complex arrangments of logic gates to make a wall-following obstacle-avoiding robot. These people are, of course, utterly mad. This is fun, satisfying, and the very best sort of difficult.
TL;DR – LogicBots is a great concept totally let down by bizarre design decisions and quite possibly the worst UI I've ever seen. It can't seem to make up its mind if it wants to be a robotic design simulator or a puzzle game, and winds up losing itself in a no-man's-land between the two, with the fiddly UI of a simulator at odds with the arbitrary restrictions and confinement of a puzzle game. I came into Logicbots expecting something akin to KSP. I envisioned generalized challenges with lots of robot parts and options for different ways to complete the challenges, where my design decisions matter, and I can achieve some cool aesthetics. Instead it's a very confined, railroady kind of puzzle game, where each puzzle has only a handful of solutions. The process of iterating designs to find that solution might have been fun... but an incredibly frustrating and fiddly UI totally lets it down. Just for context, I'm not just talking out my rear here. I've done this in real life. In college, I designed and built an autonomous robot that could navigate a maze, "mine" marble and BB "ore", sort the ore to separate it, and deposit it in separate bins at the end of the maze. It included elevation changes, wall following, and line following. Did we use individual gate chips? NO! We used a freaking computerized robot controler. Twenty years ago! This is not new tech. I can't see anybody actually bothering, in today's electronics landscape, wiring AND gates together on a perforated circuit board. Just a few examples... ~ Most parts are placed symmetrically on either side of the robot. Why then, did they not include a symmetry mode for part placement? Yes, I realize you can create snap lines. That's a lot of extra steps and extra clicks to do something that could have been done much more elegantly with a mirror symmetry placement mode. ~ Connecting circuit boards requires either extremely and irritatingly precise clicks on a few pixels, when zoomed out enough to see the big picture, or many wheel scrubs to zoom in and out. If you misclick, which you will do a lot, enormous UI elements come onto the screen, often blocking what you're trying to click. Larger pins or even a right-click context menu system would be much better. A key binding to go into wiring mode would be better. ~ When editing numbers in certain circuits, the game zooms all the way in for you, "helpfully". I'm sure this *seemed* like a good idea. It wasn't. If you can even begin to click on the tiny little connections to wire circuits, you can just as easily read the numbers you're typing. I don't need them blown up to be a 200-point font. And I definitely don't need the many scroll actions required to zoom back out to work on everything else. ~ Keybinding cannot be edited. Not even manually through a config file. It's hard-coded into the game. Some people may not care. I care a lot. I don't use wasd. I use esdf. Because it's superior in every concievable way. Feel free to disagree, but I should still be able to rebind keys in my game. ~ Reference information for things like what effect a certain logic gate has should be easy to find, preferably on the screen in a non-disruptive manner whenever the part is highlighted. This could be done with a tool-tip on mouse-over quite easily. It could simply be included in the frankly unnecessarily ginormous UI that pops up when the part is selected. Nope, instead you have to click an icon to open it up, every single time, which covers up most of the screen so that, rather than reasoning through your circuit with enough information, you have to choose: information or circuit visibility. ~ This scenario happens all the time. I pick out a part to put on the robot. I realize I needed a certain type of symmetry. Can I drop the part in empty space conveniently to pick up later, so I can add snap lines? Nope. Can I just hold the part in my cursor while I use other UI elements to at least turn on snap lines I've previously created? No again. I have to undo everything about the part selection, or I have to put it on the robot somewhere else (which is ridiculous in terms of immersion and realism... "Let me solder this sensor onto some random part of the robot's body... then I can pick up my ruler to measure out where I wanted it in the first place... now I can de-solder it and move it to where it should have been." Ridiculous.) This may sound like a minor gripe, but it happens over and over and over, with the annoyance building up each time. Other design decisions are just as bizarre: ~ Parts are arbitrarily and artificially restricted on each level. Why? Have they not invented the NAND gate yet? Really? That's odd since I can access mathematical logic, which very likely has NAND gates inside of it. Player choice is never a bad thing. Let me choose from *any* logic gate. ~ For that matter, why are we using physical logic gates at all? This seems like a choice more about reliving some childhood nostalgia than a real decision about how modern robot building works. In the real world today, I don't see why anyone would bother with individual AND and NOT gates when small computerized controllers like Arduinos are so cheap and readily available. Just googling now, I can buy an entire computerized controller for less than some single gates cost in this game. Did the developer just not bother to check that? I think a much more fun game concept, and a much more useful life-skill to teach would be to *program* the robot, rather than *wire* it from gate to gate. Why go with the wiring? Well because it's more like a puzzle, obviously. That kind of arbitrary game design is just... unfortunate. ~ Why do chassis include motors that can magically send output anywhere? Why do they only run at a single specific RPM? Why not let the player build *inside* the chassis? A trade-off between lightweight and simple versus putting in more battery power to supply more voltage to more powerful motors sounds a lot more interesting and engaging to me. Well, I'll tell you why. The puzzle. It always comes back to this game wanting desperately to be a -puzzle- instead of a simulation of real robot building. If you could vary the voltage sent to a motor, how could they make you choose between specific chassis on a simplistic comparison of cost vs. RPM? It would almost be like you could use whatever chassis appeals to you visually, and then solve the level in your own way... and we can't have that. You must do the level *their* way. The puzzle's way. Silly human with your desire for *choice* and *creativity*. ~ Why are prices so absurd and arbitrary? £5 for a special signal splitter board? IRL I could do that with two bits of wire for probably less than a penny. £10 for a single AND gate? Survey says: A 74x08 chip with *four* AND gates on it costs $0.53. And again, the hundred-odd pounds of logic in many robots in the game could easily be replaced by a £20 Arduino that has infinitely more interesting and fun possibilities for design and gameplay. Imagine: instead of building a simple logic-gate-based robot that can barely manage to follow a line in a jittery way, you *could* do that with an Arduino-based robot design with the same simple logic, as the "beginner" robot. But a more advanced design might include multiple sensors to detect how *quickly* you're crossing the line, allowing you to write code to adjust the *voltage* to each motor for smooth curves, to complete the level with speed and style, via more advanced coding and design. That sounds like a fun game, where my decisions matter, and my skills actually help. Oh I wish I'd bought *that* game.
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Languages: English, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese
Hours played at review time, across 48 reviews with recorded playtime.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
I have been considering getting a raspberry pi computer and a robots kit to build a mobile weather station (my own 'Mars rover') just for fun. But I hesitate to spend a couple of hundred dollars on a project that I might not have the talent or persistence to complete. Then I saw logicbots on Steam. For a fraction of the cost of real parts I could practice building robots and circuits before laying down the serious money. I am only three hours into the game, but I can already see it meets my expectations. The tutorial is a very good introduction to boolean logic and simple circuit board construction. There is an extensive campaign with increasingly challenging tests, and a sandbox mode to just mess around. Building the robots, and designing the control circuit is very interesting.The robots look realistic, and the building on the circuit boards has a simple but realistic feel. The only thing missing is writing code. The puzzles can all be solved by logic; unlike many puzzle games the difficulty is not created by making you try random guesses. The interface could be a little better designed: it often takes multiple clicks to do what I feel should be acomplished in one. But I haven't encountered any game breaking bugs. I have read several negative reviews that fault the game because there is a small random factor in the tests: what this means is that if you repeat the same test with the same robot you might get different results. This situation is described in the tutorial under the reliability heading, and ways to engineer around it are discussed. The random factor is a deliberate part of the game, to simulate real world situations. In the real world it is almost impossible to control all the variables, so real devices must be over engineered to cope with the unexpected. Personnaly I like this approach. This randomness is not just luck, it is a design challenge that can be overcome by careful analysis. However, if you are looking for a strictly mathematical game with no random factors, then you might find this approach to be annoying. I think the game is well worth the price if you are interested in programming and robotics. And much cheaper than the real thing.
This simulation good . However you do need knowledge in computer logic. Though you can learn the basics of NAND, OR and AND logics. It is steep learning curve to combine so be prepared for frustration getting things right. If you put the time effort in its rewarding to see your bot achieve the goals. Its also tricky in the build as it can be little tricky to align the wheels I found even with the help.
Uncomfortable and unintuitive UI take all the fun out of it. It takes forever to do simple tasks such as connecting a couple of wires or selecting and placing components. Unless the developers do a complete overhaul of the UI and controls, I can't recommend this game to anyone. I'd have asked for a refund but I'm past the 2 week limit.
I have had my eye on this game for a while as actually building robots can be very expensive but I always wanted to try my hand at it. The game was very recently ported to Linux and as such I snapped it up immediately, I was not disappointed! The game is superbly well designed with a training area, a sandbox mode as well as a career mode with some pre-defined challenge levels in each with acheivements to complete (like time to complete, no of parts used and cost). Those levels are pretty simple in the begining but quickly start providing more and more of a brain teaser as you go on. There are five areas in the career mode and I have only just completed the last level in the first area today! The last level in the first area looks deceptively simple but is actually a real head scratcher when you start getting into the detail. Finding any negatives in this game is pretty hard I would say, it will obviously significantly tax your problem solving skills but realisitcally if you expected a game like this to be easy I would say you need to re-evaluate those expectations. The only real negative I can think is that in order to progress to the next levels you cannot just complete the previous levels but must also have completed a certain number of acheivements in the earlier levels. It might be nice to be able to progress to the next level without having to acheive a lot of the preceeding challenges first. Still its a pretty small negative in the grand scheme of things and it may be possible the devs will amend this at some stage in the future. I would say if you are looking for just a bit of fun with some robots the sandbox area will give you that and if you are looking for a real challenge for the mind then the career mode gives you that. Overall the game is not only fun but gives a great experience in development and puzzle solving skills coupled with some genuine learning about electronics and robotics. I can highly recommend this game, a well deserved 9/10. Also as a last point if you are a Linux user I can confirm that this game worked flawlessly on my Debian based OS. The hardware stats on my gaming pc are pretty minimal too so I would say this is a superb port to the platform!
First off I been on Steam for a really long time, and this is the first time I have written a review. Not because this game is better than every other game I have played, but because I feel like there needs to be more people playing this so that it can really go far. This game (if you can call it that, more on that later) might be in Early Access, but it is one of the most complete games I've played in early access. I have only ran into one bug that happened twice in my first 10 hours of game play. That bug being that it crashed when starting the simulation. Otherwise everything works as expected. The reason I would maybe not consider calling this a game is because it’s not designed to be some easy pickup and play. It’s a robot simulator, well maybe not even that. It’s a circuit simulator that happens to have robots. If you don’t understand Boolean operators, AND, OR, NOT, or XOR then this game might not be for you. This really did take me back to basic circuit building. There is only a sandbox piece to the circuit building. To use the robots you have to play through all the levels and unlock the components. Another downside is there is almost no community around this game as of this writing, so if you get stuck on a level your SOL. At least for now, I really hope that changes and we see a bigger community. Go play it! Have fun building and then re-building.
First review I've written, cause I want this game to get more attention. In a way its a successor to the old gem "Mind Rover", where one built bots to do various tasks in a similar manner. Th basic premsie is, using boolean logic gates, sensors, motors and various widgets, to accomplish a series of puzzles with robots. The graphics are simple but serviceable, but the audience for the this game is probably not gonna be swayed by the graphics much anyway. Its a fantastic teaching game for those new to propositional logic, and great for all the tinkerers out there. My only complaint, and rumor has it its being worked on, is the interface is a bit clunky. But, for an early access game its remarkably polished, Ive only run into one minor bug so far where it got confused after I deleted a sensor. Anyways, its a great game and logic/teaching toy and I can't wait to see more come out of it.
LogicBots is an amazing idea poorly implemented. The way you can customize the bots to complete tasks is super fun, but then they challenge you to construct something that can only do the task if you construct it in an extremely precise manner in the only and exact way it can be done. This would be fine except the game cant handle it. You use the horrendous UI and use snap lines to construct which should make the bot run symmetrically, but AS SOON as you hit run it makes a right turn. There is no predictability in what happens and even the sensors seem to be random on what they pick up. If you cant even make the bot drive straight how are we expected to plan anything. Spamming the rerun program button will end up with crazy differences each run. Bonkers. Then there is actually constructing the bot, if there wasn't a tutorial there is NO way any one would figure out what is going on. The constraints in the UI are my main issue, it takes forever to do what should absolutely be a simple task. Bonkers. None of this would be an issue for a 5$ game. Except they charge an exuberant amount of 20$ for a concept game at best.
The beginning parts of the game are fun when it's as simple as attaching and programming sensors straight onto the main chassis of the robot. When you get to more complex stuff you then have to start using the metal tube and angle pieces to build up some frame work to place sensors and more complex moving parts. My main problem with this is when you put a tube or angle piece in place is there's no way to change the size of it, you have to delete and place a new one, and anything else that was placed on that tube gets deleted too. What should be a simple and quick change such as making an existing tube longer or shorter all of a sudden becomes a massive chore having to completely reconstruct the whole robot again. All of the placement is also done with arbitrary snap planes, no numerical input is possible. I'm not saying it has to be similar to full on design software like Inventor or SolidWorks, but some of the basics would've been nice. I also think the programming part is somewhat unrealistic and limited. Even in the year this game was released the vast majority of devices similar to what you'd be building in here would have a micro-controller of some kind that would have to be programmed with little to no analogue circuitry. Sure, make it an extra challenge to make the robot that doesn't use a micro-controller but it's just not that realistic. If the programming environment was similar to the game Shenzhen I/O it would have been perfect. One part of the robot building process that isn't touched on at all in this game is the electrical aspect, just basically assume every robot is powered by a limitless nuclear reactor. It would have been nice to have a basic selection of battery banks to weigh electrical capabilities against cost to make sure all of the onboard devices are getting enough juice. I know some of this is kinda asking a lot for a game that's only $20, but an update that allows us to change the size of already in place frame work would be absolutely huge for starters.
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