Robots
Overview
Robots is a handheld title for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS based the Blue Sky Studios feature film. Players control Rodney Copperbottom, a robot who’s just arrived in Robot City with nothing but his trusty wrench and dreams to become an inventor for Big Weld Industries. Rodney soon finds out that Big Weld is nowhere to be found and Ratchet has taken control of the company. With his ingenuity and the help of his friends, the Rusties, Rodney rescues Big Weld and puts an end to Ratchet’s tyrannical rule.
Gameplay combines elements from classic beat-em-ups like TMT4: Turtles in Time and platforming games. Robot City is constructed with a series of interconnected maps (like Metroid or Castlevania). Players must complete the requisite tasks before new areas are unlocked, but they may otherwise freely explore the city. Fast travel is available via the transit ball racing game. As players explore the city, they find scrap parts that can be used to construct new tools like the Scrap Gun, Electro Zapper, and Magono Grenade.
The Nintendo DS version features high resolution graphics, 3D menus, a 3D version of the transit ball racing game, and a unique transit ball challenge mode.
My Role
For Robots, I designed, built, and scripted levels. Each level was designed on paper. A heightmap was then created using Pro Motion. This heightmap was extruded automatically with Griptonite Games’ proprietary tool. Level artists drew the background art on top of the extruded heightmap. Finally, levels were populated with game objects and scripted using an event driven programming language.
