RoboSnakes: Core Wars Legacy

Wow, just the game I was looking for. My impression is that Robosnakes has a very decent tactical depth as it offers plenty tactical intricacies that you need to consider if you want to win. Despite having only very little hobby-experience in programing, I had no troubles to understand how the AIs work and are evaluated during battle. And as the battles themselves are very transparent, can be paused and rewind, the game is very well suited for slow, pondering armchair generals like myself.

[table] [tr] [th] [h1] Category [/h1] [/th] [th] [h1] Score [/h1] [/th] [th] [h1] Details [/h1] [/th] [/tr] [tr] [td] [b] Gameplay [/b] [/td] [td] [h1] [code] 8[/code] [/h1] [/td] [td]I’ll be honest. I don’t play games like these at all, even more, I barely knew of their existence. I simply stumbled upon this game through the Strategy tag and got intrigued. After spending a few hours playing this game I must admit, I find the idea of a game like this brilliant. The mix of the classic Nokia snake and the experience of semi-programming it led me to discover a completely new type of way to enjoy video games. I’d say this is the strongest part of this game, except maybe for the multiplayer. [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] [b] Graphics [/b] [/td] [td] [h1] [code] 7[/code] [/h1] [/td] [td] Simple but fits the atmosphere. It misses a bit of variety in the types of snakes. Overall, I like the atmosphere of the game and everything playing out on blocks suspending in space. Interesting idea, sort of reminds me of A Space Odyssey. [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] [b] Music/SFX [/b] [/td] [td] [h1] [code] 7[/code] [/h1] [/td] [td] Fits into the game nicely, isn’t annoying or distracting. [/td] [/tr] [tr] [td] [b]…

I really appreciate the idea behind this game. As someone who actually is involved with software programming in their daily life I can say that thanks to the code being so simplistic, you don’t need any previous experience. The game (thank god) requires no mechanical skill from you and despite the levels looking similar the challenges are fun and different almost every time. There is a potential for replayability in the campaign, however I enjoyed the versus mode the most. Although it was intended to play against a friend I found it equally as fun to put two of my programs against each other just to test which would win more. I can’t wait to see how this game will develop and what new features will be added...

There is a review with 0.2h on the game...guess he didn't pass the tutorial :-D The game is very "simple" and can be played with mouse alone. Code is contextual and only propositions that are valid are show. The devs probably don't know it, but it's called projectional code editing. If you google that term, you will see an article of Martin Fowler about it. So, if you want to bable-tech, you can say: "I played a game using projectional code editing to modify the snake abstract syntax tree" A bit buggy, but EA game.

Good stuff

The game works nothing like Core Wars. The only thing it has in common with the classic is that is a game where you write programs, so it's kind of strange to reuse that name.