Bumble Bots Re-Pair is a difficult action puzzle game. In the game you need to re-unite (re-pair) bots by fixing the paths they traverse. Can you complete all ten levels?
Credits
The idea for this game was created during this year's Global Game Jam, where the theme was "repair". It's a spin-off of the Robo Re-Pair game that we created during the jam.
The music was created by my brother and first used in my original Bumble Bots game (Low Rez).
Tips
The tiles that you are offered are randomly selected. However, you will always be offered tiles that fit somewhere on the grid. Furthermore, the tiles on offer will be unique. The order in which you place tiles and where you place them therefore matters. Exploit this to increase the odds that you get favourable tiles.
It helps to hedge your bets. Have a fallback plan in case you do not get tiles that match your perfect route.
At the start you may want to keep many open ends, so you can place "undesired" tiles somewhere. Towards the end you may want to reduce the number of open ends, to increase the probability that you are offered the tiles that you still need to complete your route.
Updates
23 May 2020 - Version 1.0
- Added two new levels
- Added hi-score tracking
- Fancier title screen
- Fancier Help screen
- Penalty points for open ends
- Enable toggling music on/off
- More juicy animations
18 Feb 2020
- Added two new levels, both with two pairs of bots
- Score remaining lives at end of game
- Improved title screen
- Improved pair animation
16 Feb 2020
- Added three new levels
- On completing a level gain a life
- Added tiny bots to title screen
...that was really really hard! And it felt a bit random-chance-y - like, it was always possible to move (I'm guessing you enforced that in the code), but it frequently felt like I couldn't beat the level because I didn't get the piece I needed to beat the level with.
And the UI isn't well explained - the art is really nice (I love the way the bots tip over as they fall off the track!) but I don't understand what the circuit components mean, if anything.
Edit: I did have a reasonably good time figuring out how to play better, and eventually beat level 3, so yeah - tricky and unclear, but still fun.
@packbat, thanks for your feedback. Well done for already beating all current levels!
Yeah, there is randomness, but not all tiles appear with the same probability. The game is a bit helpful that way. Furthermore, as you already discovered, the new tile can always be placed somewhere. Maybe not where you want it to be, but still.
So after playing a bit you hopefully get a feel for the dynamics and can exploit that to increase your chances of success.
The circuit components are just eye candy. They have no meaning.
I like the idea.
The ramp up is very sudden, from a level that requires no input to a level that uses all the game elements. Maybe introduce the game elements gradually, starting with curves and straights, then crosses, the T junctions, etc etc.
Great idea but frustrating execution.
The entire game I'm only begging for the game to deploy the right parts, which it never did. I feel like I should be able to trust the game that it always deploys the right parts, but I just can't.
Also, who thaught that limited lives are a good idea, especially in a puzzle game?
They just serve to waste the players time, and additionally the developers time by making the game actively worse with no positives at all.
I'm sorry that I couldn't find a single positive besides good idea, but that's the truth about what I think of this game.
If it were three attempts per level instead of three attempts per game, that would probably help make it feel a lot less luck-based.
Thanks for all your comments. I have just uploaded a new version
@dredds, the new version has a ramp-up level. It features only a subset of the parts and only offers you a single tile. It teaches what the placement restrictions are and demonstrates that you always get a tile that can be placed somewhere. It still not easy though, so maybe another ramp-up level would be good.
@packbat, you now gain a life when you complete a level (unless you are maxed out already, in which case you get extra points instead). This should suffice. In my practise runs I typically always complete the game, and often die only once or never.
@Sosasees, note, that this is not a plain puzzle game, it is intended to be an action puzzle game, quite similar to Tetris actually. There you need to plan ahead, you need to hedge your bets, you need think and act quickly, which you also should do here. It is also less luck based than you might think although it's definitely not easy. Nevertheless, if this game is not your cup of tea, that's fine of course.
I don't know how to reply to a comment, but I'll try as best I can:
User eriban (I think I'm suppposed to spell @eriban with an @-prefix so that he gets notified about this comment) recently made the game a lot better by adding a few levels at the beginning that made it much easier to understand the game. For example, level 2 proofs to me that all parts are hand-picked even though they get deployed in a random order.
I think I would play much further than level 3 if there is a level select, so that I wouldn't have to repeat previous levels (repeating previous levels improves my skills at the game, but eventually stops doing so and then only wastes time from that point onward).
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