It’s been a minute since I did some game dev, so when the announcement email for Pirate Software’s 16th Game Jam popped up on Friday 17th I wasn’t really sure if I’d actually take part. In fact, it wasn’t until Sunday 19th that I woke up with an idea that fitted the “You Are The Weapon” theme.

The Theme & The Idea

My idea was fairly straight-forward: Robot Wars as a roguelike.

This meant three key features:

1. Bot Customisation

Player own their bot builds

Players start by building a bot with simple parts. You then gradually enhance your bot with the semi-randomised parts found between rounds.

Weapon parts include things like spikes, ramps, armour, and damage boosters. The more rounds you complete, the better the parts you’ll find.

2. Enemy Bots:

Enemies provide unique challenges

Spinner is a spinning bot, hence the name. It’ll gradually spin faster and faster whilst slowly approaching the player.

In comparison, Ploughman is armed with a ramp and axe. It’ll charge the player on sight in an attempt to lift you onto its ramp, once there it’ll swing its axe for damage. If Ploughman charges and misses, it’ll sweep left and right to find the player.

3.Arena Combat:

The arena is also an enemy

One of the best parts of Robot Wars was the arena hazards, so I wanted to bring some of that into RoboDojo.

The arena has five spaces for floor hazards, which can be spikes or ramps, and two wall types: short walls that you can be flipped over and tall walls with spiked sections.

Post-Jam Feedback

This jam was different to ones I’ve previous entered in three key ways:

• It was two weeks long (much longer than usual)
• Winners were selected by judges rather than participant votes
• Entries required a game design document, as well as a game

Feedback was therefore slightly different, with no scores and more text.

Judge Comments

• RoboDojo invoked nostalgia for PS1 games ✅
• Controls were easy to learn, difficult to master ✅
• Customisation was fun, but more would’ve been good ✅
• Deaths could be frustrating (e.g. getting flipped out of the arena) ❌
  • MR: Agreed on this, the player could lose very quickly if they were flipped
• Too difficult to complete in the time they had ⚖️
• Self-righting after being flipped should be an option ✅
  • MR: I definitely wanted to add this, but prioritised weapons first
• A full customisation skirmish mode would be nice ✅
  • MR: Definitely agree, the current Quick Match mode just gives you a random setup

Player Themes

• “This is like robot wars” ✅
• “Clearly involved a lot of work” ✅
• Would work really well with multiplayer ✅
• No visual feedback when damage is taken ❌
  • MR: Definitely something I wanted to do more with (e.g. sparks on impact), but didn’t have enough time
• Customisation was great, wanted more ✅
• Physics felt too light, too easily flipped
  • MR: Optimising the Godot physics engine can be tricky, for example there was a bug that caused some bot parts to move when the wheels moved. This is also the first game in which I used the Jolt extension rather than Godot’s default physics engine. That fixed some issues, but not everything.

Ultimately I’m pretty happy with how the game turned out. Time-permitting, I’d like to add some additional weapons and enemies in the future.

You can play RoboDojo now on itch.io.