A wonderful PC game written and published by CogniToy, LLC. There are so many compliants about games being unoriginal... This one truly is different from anything you have played before.
The rather pointless back story is that you are a scientist sent to Europa for some reason. It is really boring there, so everyone builds robots to pass the time.
System Specifications:
-
P200 Mhz Processor (300 Mhz recommended)
- Windows 95/98/NT (It runs in Windows 2000, as well, but it was released before WIndows 2000, so it isn't mentioned in the manual)
- 32 MB RAM (64 MB recommended)
- 16 bit color mode
- Sound card
- DirectX7 or higher
- 70 MB hard drive storage
- 4x CD-ROM drive
It only runs in OpenGL, too.
MindRover is somewhat of an educational game, in that your goal is to desgin and program an independent robot that is capable of performing a specified goal. Different missions require highly different strategies, vehicles, and components.
Scenarios:
- Battles: Combat, plain and simple. Kill your opponent more often than he kills you.
- Miscellaneous: Capture the flag, Crystal Collection, a Maze, Tag.
- Sports: Sumo (bump your opponent out of the arena), Hockey.
- Races: Drag Race, some weapons-enabled races, some team races.
- Tutorials: Teaching scenarios.
Vehicles:
- Hovercraft: Require thrusters (jet engines) for propulsion and control. Slides around on all surfaces easily.
- Wheeled: A car, basically, without an engine or steering mechanism. You can also use the thrusters for a jet powered car.
- Treaded: A tank-like vehicle. Very high level of control, since it can pivot, but slowest of the vehicle types.
Each vehicle type also has three sizes:
small,
medium, and
large, with varying amounts of hit points and component placement spots. Some scenarios resrict the types and sizes of vehicles availible for the mission.
Component Types:
- Movement: Thrusters, engines, steering components. There are different sizes of engines, which weigh more, take up more space, and produce more power.
- Sensors: Sonar, Radar, track sensors and other things that allow to to tell what is going on in the world around you.
- Weapons: Lasers, Rockets, Machine Guns, mines. Fun for the whole family.
- Navigation and Communication: sensors for determining your bot's posistion in the world, it's bearing, and the radio transmitter and reciever, which allow communication between teammates.
- Extras: Moslty just fun stuff, but the LootCarrier is included here. The various lights and the speaker can be used for debugging, too.
When all wired together, with logic gates, mathematical components, and timing components, the robots can do a lot of really fun things, like hunt down and destroy the enemy. Really, the best part of the game is the battles. The other parts, like the Sumo Wrestling scenarios are fun, but not nearly as spectacular.
The initial release was a little buggy, but patches and component and scenario add-ons have improved the game significantly.
It is quite addictive, just like tweaking a ailly program for hours to make it perfect can be. Once you hit the "GO" button, your creation is totally on its own, with no way for you to influence its behavior.
The website is located at http://www.cognitoy.com.