Rescue Robots From Recycling In Rusty Robots
Rusty Robots ($0.99) by Paul Stamp is an assembly line app where the goal is to repair broken robots before they are destroyed.
At its core, this is a matching game, so to play, you will grab broken robots, identify the malfunctioning part, and then find a matching unbroken part to repair the robot.
In Rusty Robots, the broken robots will scroll by on a conveyor belt. Each robot has a broken component, either head, body, arms, or legs. This broken part flashes, and it’s your job to fix the broken part before the robot is destroyed by the scrap yard crusher at the end of the screen.
The bottom part of the screen has a line up of spare robot parts, and it’s your job to tap on the broken robot, tap on the part that needs replacing, and then find the matching replacement part to repair it.
Every repaired robot will give you coins, which you must pick up by tapping. Coins quickly disappear, and trying to tap coins and repair robots at the same time is a frustrating gameplay mechanic. If you skip picking up the coins, your score does not increase.
There are quite a few robot parts, so finding the correct part can take a few seconds. When the assembly line begins to speed up, it can be quite a challenge to repair those robots before they’re crushed. You have three lives, so if more than three robots are destroyed, it’s game over and you’ll have to restart.
While the gameplay is fast paced, the glorified matching in Rusty Robots quickly becomes both repetitive and boring. There’s no change in scenery and repairing robot after robot with no variation is monotonous. This might be a good game for younger children, but adults will find the game too simplistic to be played for more than a few minutes.
The app has some other minor bugs that made it irritating to play, including multiple crashes and no pause button. If you want to stop playing, you’ll need to exit the app or restart the game from the beginning.
Rusty Robots has a great concept and a visually appealing aesthetic, but the gameplay itself needs improvement to be on par with other apps in terms of entertainment value.
