{Review} Nanobots - Experiment 2902

"Nanobots - Experiment 2902" by Tim Spence


Story
Finally someone recognises they need you and should follow your orders. You are the hive mind and there are nanobots who are really craving your leadership. And what do nanobots do? Replicate. Expand. Grow. So the angle of the contest is most definitely covered and I feel like nanobots as a "species" are kind of a perfect fit.

Mechanics
I don't know if the strategy subgenre "Send your minions to a node, conquer it, use resources to conquer new nodes" already has a name ("Oh, theres a new SYMTAN-CI-URTCNN-SG."), but "Nanobots" owes a lot to it.
From your central node, you send your bots to a new node that belongs to one of three resources, crystals, DNA and... more on that later.
There, you harvest resources and choose which one of four structures you want to construct there. A control station that lets you create paths for you bots, so you can send them to other nodes? A defense station? A research station? Or a power station to gather the fourth resource, energy?
The order in which you expand also creates the paths your building and fighting bots take.
There is a lot of consideration to be done, since expansion slows down your colony and your building spots are limited. Also, some of the map is covered by the fog of war. So, do you construct a power plant on your newest node because you really need the power? Or do you play it safe and choose a defense platform?
The bad news is, you have plenty of time to consider, since your builders move like they have a severe hangover and are three days from retirement anyway. So the game is in desperate need of a time acceleration function.
There are some additional wrinkles, like round and square spots in your way that hinder your bots unless blasted by a fighter drone.
Your menu options are the main menu, skipping the tutorial, restarting the level and muting the music, and the music alone. You should better know what you want to do, because nanobots wait for no one and the game continues while you are in the menu,

Presentation
My first thought was: "Wow, this is a busy screen." Not in the sense that there is movement everywhere like in "The Settlers", but designwise. Your structures have several nooks and crannies, and they are built on resource points with their own detailed icons. On top of that, there is the colourful and detailed background. A little less saturation on those might have helped to make things look more comprehensive. The resource symbols are enormous and fill up what seems like a fifth of your screen. Add to that bots and pathways and your screen looks pretty cluttered.
The whole game has a handdrawn look to it, or to be more precise: hand drawn on cardboard. I don't mean to say the art is bad. It's not and I really like the design of the different bots and buildings. It's just that it reminds me of stuff you doodle on the back of your college block when the lecture bores you. In my opinion. something about this aesthetic just doesn't gel with the high tech theme.
Now, about the third resource that I mentioned earlier... I admit, I didn't pay attention when the game explained it to me and after that, it was gone. There are no tooltips and hardly any explanations for upgrades or building icons. If you did not memorise what the top left icon of the defense platform does, it's time for trial and error.
After you finish a level, there is a nice zoom-out transition and the view of the last level shrinks to become the core of the next level's base. Nice touch.
There is one minor thing I loved: the tutorial arrow. When you are supposed to click on something, an arrow appears next to your cursor that changes colour the farther you are from where you are supposed to be. No idea why but I really liked that gentle way to tell the player: "Eh, you might wanna look left a bit."
There are no bugs to report from my playing.

On the whole...
I would have liked to play more of nanobots if its gameplay had been a bit faster and its screen slightly more organised. The way it is, I would recommend it to fans of the SYMTAN-CI-URTCNN-SG genre (you better believe I'm trademarking that expression...) who are looking for some fresh idea and can deal with a more leisurely pace.
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Link: http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/609#.Vc3-KPntlBd

Dev: Tim Spence


Time Played: 35 minutes

Got My Vote? Toss-up, but yes, mainly on strength of personality and the effort that went into it clearly shows.