Bots Are Stupid

TL;DR: Interesting concept but it gets old far too fast for what it could be, and the advertisement is misleading enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth. Despite all the talk that "It's Mario Maker with coding", this is a TAS-ing game thorugh and through. There is no logic puzzle to solve, it's all a question of finding perfect values to wait for. And more importantly, there is nothing there that could make it a real programming game, there are no real inputs and everything is deterministic. The two ways to finish a level are to hard code all the wait durations as constant time values, or use the macros and make the robot wait for some given time that will turn out to be constant since everything is deterministic. If you want to optimize for time, this becomes an even bigger issue as the given shortcuts to wait while precise are not always useful (with the exception of wait until hooked; unhook being really strong), and if you want to offset from them by even a single frame you need to just use a wait command either way. Optimizing for number of instructions is interesting, but not really fulfilling IMO, I did it for the first few levels and then dropped it to go fast.

Very fun to play

If you don't mind the brute-force nature of the "coding" in this game, it's very satisfying to watch your solution come together. I don't know if it's some clunkiness of the controls, but it never really felt intuitive until I had almost beaten the game. Fun for a small little project~ but glad it wasn't too much longer than it was.

Bots Are Stupid is one of the most inventive indie puzzle-platformers in recent years because it completely changes the traditional relationship between the player and movement. Instead of directly controlling a character through jumps and obstacles, players create command sequences that instruct a robot how to move through dangerous levels. The robot then follows those commands exactly as written, often with disastrous results if the timing or instructions are even slightly incorrect. What initially seems like a simple gimmick quickly develops into a deeply satisfying mix of programming logic, puzzle-solving, speedrunning, and precision platforming that constantly rewards experimentation and optimization. The gameplay is built around creating simple scripts that control the robot’s actions. Players input commands such as moving, jumping, waiting, or grappling, then execute the sequence to see how the robot performs. Because the robot obeys instructions literally, even tiny mistakes can completely ruin a run. A jump executed half a second too early may send the robot directly into spikes, while a poorly timed movement command can throw the entire sequence out of sync. This creates…

I'm not too far into the game yet, but after finding my footing in the first couple levels of introduction, I've had a blast iterating on my programs to sling my little bot around each corner as quickly as possible to shave time off the clock and climb the rankings for each level. You can of course just write a program that completes the level and then move on, but I couldn't help myself spending time optimizing each corner in a level, finding the perfect hook spot, getting the exit timing just right to set up a perfect entry angle to the next corner, and having little eureka moments when I've discovered new ways to utilize the movement mechanics to quickly build up or slightly alter momentum. For background, in the past I've spent a worrying amount of time in racing games, running the same circuits repeatedly to find the optimal path over the road and learning the quirks of different vehicles to squeeze every second out of the clock that I can manage. This game scratches the same itch; if you enjoy iterating and optimizing your times, I bet you'll get some kick out of it. While I don't seem to be finding any different bots to control yet, the apparently simple movement physics …

excellent.