Robot Builder

(continuing my review of Facebook games)

I previously mentioned a group that made several good games. The best of these is Robot Builder.

Robot Builder originally suffered from the same Add Me effect that most games have. Then some sort of bug caused them to remove it (this was before I started). They never did re-enable it, which turned out to be a great decision.

Game play is pretty simple. You have several resources to manage: energy, money, and robot tokens (RT, this is how they raise money, you can buy RT - although you can also find them in the game).

Energy is refilled at 10 per 15 minutes (as opposed to the typical 1/4 or 1/5). This is somewhat irritating early in the game, when you only have 10 or 11 max.

Your goal is to build robots. There are many different areas to salvage through (which take energy and money, sometimes RT). You can also do different "fights" in the arena - but these are basically different areas which can only be explored once per hour (or four hours, I forget).

You mainly raise money by selling parts, energy refills automatically, and you find RT. Different robots allow access to different arena fights, new areas, or give you additional energy storage.

Not a lot to see.

The hidden gem in this game is the market system.

The market allows players to trade items for RT. You can sell your rare parts (any parts really) for RT, and buy the parts you need. Or buy parts to sell for cash (giving RT a value in cash).

Being a market, there are tidal effects (as players sign off for the night, or sign on in the morning). This creates timing opportunities. You can buy parts when there are many players online as an investment, then sell them off when the market is short. You can also try to corner the market (by buying all the parts others supply, and holding out for higher prices).

This gives the game a lot of playability - even when there is no new content. It does require a large number of players to support the market. Sadly, total abandonment by the developers has pretty much killed this game.