Grab your shovel, sharpen your sword and get ready to have your debilitating case of gold fever cured, because it's time to do some treasure hunting. You won't even have to experience the back breaking labor or the legal and moral grey areas that come with excavating artifacts. Thanks to the Bad Viking team, which consists of Rob Donkin, robotJAM and Cathy McBurney, and their new RPG/minesweeper-treasure-hunting game The Legend of the Golden Robot
To start treasure hunting, head to one of the 21 different areas. Each area is a grid and you have 24 hours to explore it. The first thing to do is to pick a square and dig, which takes a certain amount of time depending on the type of shovel you have equipped and the type of terrain you're digging up. Treasure hunting has a strong Minesweeper-type mechanic. After you dig, there will be a number in the corner of the square you just dug up. The number tells you how many of the surrounding squares have treasure in them. If you look in the lower right hand corner you'll see a gauge that lets you know how many treasures you've found and how many are left to find on the grid.
Don't think you'll just be allowed to traipse around, digging holes and looking for shiny objects. Each area has enemies moving around and if you and an enemy land on the same square you'll have to fight. In battle you'll go face-to-face with one enemy in a turn-based battle. There's two important stats to watch during battle: health and stamina, if you want to attack you'll need to have enough stamina to perform the action. In a fight you'll have four options: attack, defend, rage (a more powerful attack that uses twice the stamina of a normal attack) and build-up (a powerful attack that takes two turns to execute). There are also special attacks that can deal damage, heal yourself or give you a speed boost, but you need to find special treasures and equip them to be able to use them. Finally, you can find buddies through out the game, usually by defeating special enemies. Buddies are little sidekicks who will deal damage or perform some special action during combat. If you happen to die in battle, don't worry, because you'll have a chance to outrun death (literally) by playing a short, easy mini-game where you have to type the letters above your character's head. You'll be taken back to the beginning of the day and any treasure collected will be undone.
A person can't spend all their time adventuring, so get cozy with the village that serves as your home base. When you level, here's where you'll distribute your three skill points between the six different stats. You'll also be able to change your equipment and buy things from the store. Not everything is available from the start, but as you level up and find more treasure more items will be unlocked. Not all the items at the store is equippable, some of items, such as the hedge clippers, are needed to access certain areas. In the village tavern you'll find a few mini-games. One is a shuffleboard-type game where you can win some money and the other is a dice game where you can win some XP, but more importantly, you'll also get told where a certain treasure is.
Analysis: If you played Bad Viking's previous game Toxers, then a lot of The Legend of the Golden Robot will seem familiar. I thought Toxers was a good game, but it definitely had its flaws. Thankfully, The Legend of the Golden Robot goes a long way in fixing some of those problems.
It would be easy for a game like this to get tedious, but a couple of things keep that from happening. The most simple is that the concept is just plain fun. Who doesn't like the idea of hunting for treasure? When you throw in the Minesweeper-style gameplay it becomes even better. Even if you keep coming up empty in your excavation it just strengthens the urge to find that treasure. This feeling doesn't wane, either; if anything it becomes more addicting the closer you get to the end. What makes this more interesting is that aside from netting you some money the treasure doesn't do very much. Still, when you find one of the major treasures it feels like a success.
The Legend of the Golden Robot can be played a few different ways. You can search for every treasure and progress through all the different areas or you can specifically hunt down the pieces of the Golden Robot to get through the game quickly. This is great if you like the game, but you find it getting stale or if you want more of a challenge. The game isn't very hard, but it's not necessarily easy. I died a fair number of times while I was playing, but it wasn't ever frustrating. It has this weird indefinable difficulty that works well, but some people might want a harder game.
It's not a perfect game. The weakest element is combat. It's not really Bad Viking's fault, because it can be hard to make old school, turn-based RPG combat compelling these days. In The Legend of the Golden Robot, you'll find yourself hitting one button over and over again. if you run out of stamina, you'll have to hit a different button, but there's not a lot of variety. That said, I did find myself in some tense situations, especially against some of the unique enemies. When both the enemy and I were low on health I became absorbed in the battle. Will I luck out and survive or will the enemy get me? Will my buddy jump in and save my skin? Will I get that crucial extra turn? In those moments the combat system was awesome.
The Legend of the Golden Robot is a great game. Its problems are few and despite them the game is incredibly addicting and fun. It's becoming clear that Bad Viking can make great games and they're learning and improving with each one.
I wish the stats where more detailed, mostly strength/attack. I couldn't tell if attack was better or if strength actually multiplied anything.
And speed was completely random.
Fun. However, I'd REALLY like the ability to mark squares on treasure grids (so I can have a visual representation to denote squares that I've calculated do not have treasure).
It ate my time. It ate all the time.
A little confused... often I'm told (after defeating a certain number of enemies, I guess) that I've unlocked a new item, such as a helmet. However, when I go to equip myself with the new item, it's nowhere to be found. Anyone know what's going on with that?
Also, I apparently need gardening sheers to proceed to the next level, but I have no clue where they are. Am I missing something?
Garden shears and other equipment like that can be bought at the village store.
The store is also where you'll have to buy items you unlock. Sometimes you'll dig up items and those will automatically be added to your inventory.
@twinkie: Sometimes you'll unlock an item in the store, but won't be a high enough level to see it yet, too.
@twinkie:
It's probably to do with level up. As you level up, you automatically unlock stuff in the shop. Also, you get a "new item" tag on you telling you to use up your stat points. Note that the shop item might appear "black" if you don't have enough coins. It'll have the unlock symbol removed though.
About the game itself... I liked it better at the beginning as it just got tedious by the end. I was 2 hit killing everything and with the stop watch special, I could kill even bosses before they appeared. The task of choosing which spade to use also got nulled as the last two are unquestionably superior, which was a petty as that was an interesting question for me (do I get the one that digs grass faster or the one that digs rocks?). Wish the weapons and buddies were more unique like the bug killing game they made before. Still, I was compelled enough to finish finding everything so points for that.
A glitch/cheat:
after using the special item that increases your speed by 50 points - after the battle your speed stat is permanently increased by 20. After a few uses my speed was 270 and most enemies never got the chance to move
FYI, items are unlocked on reaching certain levels, not on defeating a certain count of enemies (or at least so I am 99% sure). You don't need to meet any prerequisites to buy an item once it's unlocked except for having enough gold. Items you can't afford will be shown in black silhouette.
Pretty cute game. By the time it was starting to drag I was able to finish it up and dust my hands of it. Kind of a nice twist on the Minesweeper clone genre, though it doesn't provide a whole ton of incentive, besides annoyance, for being meticulous in your searching.
Why is the rating so low?
I liked the level up system on the south side of the river, but it swiftly became uneven and too easy on the other side. South side "boss" was nearly unbeatable, and the north side had me equipped with way too many goodies for it to matter.
I love, love, love the attention to detail with each treasure, and the humor was spot-on. Maybe one of the treasures can unlock the shopkeeper's secret stash of... something? Just a few tweaks here and there, and this would be a stand-out time-waster. er, game.
There are a few bugs at the end.
After defeating the wizard and digging up all of the "special" treasure, the games goes right into the end credits, even if you have other treasure left to find. When I went back into the final field, the robot was still with me, even though it had just left.
On the map with all the levels, the bubble the comes up when you hover over the level gets stuck in the show position, so I had most of the map covered in bubbles.
Oh my goodness that whale in the preview picture is ADORABLE :3
Oh man, I was having a LOT of trouble defeating the Minotaur and the Snake King... and then I found
The Excalibur sword in area 12
and I was doing 200 damage average, with the crit. being 600 damage :D
When fighting the final boss, I got a critical hit twice... the whole battle lasted about 5 turns... :D
I can't seem to escape death! If I hit the letter flashing overhead, nothing happens. If I hit Shift, I die. The review suggests that this is an easy mini game, but either I found a bug or am too dumb to live! Any suggestions?
Alright I've made a little progress but I still don't get the "minesweeper" part of the game. If a square says 4 does that mean the four surrounding squares are supposed to have prizes? Or is it counting diagonals? I'm about to hang it up unless I figure that out.
It counts the diagonals.
Where do I get the map to advance to level 12!?!? I have one corner of it, I have dug up every single square in every single level up to 11, and cannot find the friggin map. What do I do?
You have to skip level 12 for awhile and play the higher levels to find the pieces.
I have beaten the entire game. Dug up every square of every level, and have every weapon, every treasure, every piece of armor, headgear, and buddy, but am still without one special item. It appears to be the same shape as the ornament filled with healing potion, but maybe with a skull and crossbones on it. It's the 4th one on the top row. Has anyone else found this special item? How do I get it?
@Gyrofly
I have the same problem it looks like the deadly nightwish in the treasure chest but it doesn't come up on the specials.
@gyrofly and derrin96: i have found the item, its the viking's helmet - make sure to explore every area, and find all items. there is nothing to it, just find every item in every area.
I can't kill anything. I just started, and i die every freaking time.
To:Gyrofly
The special you are looking for is a green poison potion. It does have a skull and cross bones on it but it is not very effective when fighting.
This game kinda sux other than the cute graphics. Other than that, its really addictive :O i cant stop playing it -.-
For some reason, I finished the game, dug up everything, and found all of the treasures, but I am missing the second to last weapon. Does anyone know how to get it?
i have finished the game 2x with a problem i never have every buddy cause when i kill the minotaur or snake king and get killed by something else the snake king is gone and i dont have the buddy is there any way i can still get it???
I found three pieces of the map but im missing the bottom right! where is it?
I like the take on minesweeper. Neat idea. The ninja keeps getting me with his evil, evil little birdy on area 5, though. ;,,(
Okay, I finished it!! Very nice game. I liked it alot. Near the end it gets kind of repetitive though- and defeating the 'wizard' was REALLY easy.
I felt kinda bad about going back and taking advantage of a drunk man over and over again- he never caught on. And the 'buddies'- after I found the next buddy, I never took the previous buddy on a mission ever again. Poor little birdy! I worked so hard to earn him from the ninja and when I earned the penguin I must have decided that I was too cool for him. Can't I just give him to Andy? He looked like he needed some friends. :)
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