I was shopping around the iTunes featured section early last week and saw a game from IUGO that looked quite intriguing. It cost a mere $3.99 and had 26 reviews with an average 4/5 stars. You play a toy robot who has lost his memory, forced to wander through a strange world with all sorts of toy bot-sized obstacles to overcome. Oh yeah, and there’s a cool grappling hook. I had to give the game a shot.

Story

TBD basically throws you into the thick of things and story happens on the way. Once you’ve ventured far enough through the levels or collected enough cellphones (at least, they look like cellphones to me) you’ll be presented with narrative stills, indicating you’re remembering some of what happened to you. You can collect 50 cellphones over the course of the game to unlock more of the story (you can replay levels you’ve completed if you want to find cellphones you’ve missed). I’m sorry to say that I’m an awful collector of items and only got to about 20/50 :S So I know about 40% of the story, and I understand the basic premise. That’s fine by me, since the real charm lies with the rest of the game.

Graphics and Sound

“Are you hurting animals in you room [again]?” If you live with other people at home, expect to be asked questions like this as you play through the game. The scream (yelp?) that the robot lets out when he falls a long distance is actually unnerving the first time you hear it. It’s a very sharp, shrill sound that’s more a cry of exhilaration than fear. Your little dude is fearless, but he also loves his shiny cellphones (“Ooooo!!”). All the other sounds in the game are appropriately toy-ish to fit the game, and the music changes with every chapter and can vary from a soothing exploratory tune to classic, suspenseful boss battle music. Speaking of music, you won’t be able to listen to your own when TBD is on.

The graphical style of the game is a prime example of what I like to see on gaming platforms that don’t have a lot of raw power (like PC’s or Xboxes). Yeah, I know the iPhone is pretty darn powerful for a device its size, but coming from current-gen PC gaming, even the best 3D games on the iPhone look can look three years dated. I can appreciate the attempts at 3D engines, but I think smaller platforms look and feel a lot better when the games focus on more cartoonish or stylized graphics.

I really love the deep colour palette and the thick black outlines on every shape. It really helps bring TBD to life on my iPhone screen. That said – one thing I think could bring an even deeper sense of immersion is a few more animations and states for the robot. I see walking, falling, standing, and swinging states for the robot, but they can look a bit rigid, like slides being replaced, or .gif files quickly restarting their cycles. Now I know this is a $3.99 game and I’m really not expecting the highest level of animation, but I do think a few more animations to make walking more fluid, or swinging more realistic, would really go a long way. This is Toy Bot Diaries #1, so maybe we can hope for something like that in the second volume.

Gameplay

The game took me around two hours to complete, divided into four chapters (each with a few levels), so there’s a fair amount of gameplay for your money. The chapters are all re-playable, so you can always go back and retry your favourite ones (and unlock more of the story, if you missed some cellphones). The really impressive part in this game is how well the controls are set up. The accelerometer moves you from side to side, the grappling hook is controlled by tapping on metal on the screen, and your boots magnetize when you tap on yourself. Very simple, very efficient. The only time I ever really had trouble with the controls was for very fine manoeuvres, a few of which are required on the last level. However, the learning curve for the controls is very low and the controls are second-nature after the first chapter.

The game is a platformer at its heart, but with physics playing a big role. You’ll be swinging off of metal on the ceilings with your grappling hook to scale obstacles (there’s no jump), and you’ll have to secure yourself with magnetic boots before you can grapple and pull objects bigger and heavier than yourself. All of this stayed fun throughout the length of the game, and I’m quite excited to see how they might spice things up in TBD 2.

The puzzles scale up as you move along in the game, though I was never so lost that I didn’t know where I had to go, or what I had to do. The challenge was just figuring out how to do it, which is great. Despite the number of things bouncing, sliding, and falling on the screen, the game ran at a quick pace for a good majority of my journey. There were very few slowdowns.

You can “die” in the game by touching electricity or falling off the level, but it’s never that big a deal due to the frequency of checkpoints. Loading the game from scratch will start you off at the beginning of your current level.

Conclusion

I had a lot of fun playing TBD, and it’s been a real pleasure seeing what platforming can be like on the iPhone. I had my doubts about how well this kind of gameplay could work on a system without hardware buttons, but IUGO has really pulled it off here. The game was always a delight to play, and the checkpoint system within levels took a lot of the sting out of “dying’. Toy Bot Diaries’ first entry is a good game at a great price level, and its mechanics are very accessible. Just make sure you lower the volume or wear earphones in public. That loud “yippee” the robot screams can attract a lot stares!

Related posts:

1. $10,000 Toy Bot Diaries Contest (iPhone/iTouch)
2. Review: IUGO’s TBD2
3. Review: IUGO’s Shaky Summit
4. Let’s get ready to rumbleeeeee!
5. IUGO fire sale! $0.99 on all titles!