If you build it, they will come … wait, that’s not right.

Let’s try that again. If you build it, you will go – straight to tournaments to see if your creation has what it takes. Who knows, you might even win some cash. Yep, real money.

Ok, let’s backtrack just a bit. The game is RoboForge and it is a program of battling robots. That is the simple explanation. There is quite a bit more too it than just that. In fact, you have to build the bot, and that is the strength and most of the fun of the program.

You begin in the workshop, so to speak, to build your robotic fighter. You can either go with the bot wizard, or you can start with just a chassis and customize/create your own mechanical monster of mayhem. The bot wizard gives you a basic robot, which you can then semi-customize through a nine-step building program. In finishing off the design of the bot, you will pick the controller, its energy source, sensor, left tentacle (depending on the bot), right tentacle, A.I. (artificial intelligence) basic reflexes, A.I. attack tactics, A.I. extras (such as avoiding the arena wall, or retreating from combat if winning with 30 seconds left in the match), and the naming process.

At that point, you are not even close to being finished. Once the bot has its basic form, you take it into another area of the shop for customization. You can paint every inch of your robot in a virtual 3D setting in which the camera can be zoomed in or out, and you can view your creation from every conceivable angle. Once you have it painted, you move into the programming phase.

This is where the game gets rather intricate and a little complicated. Not only are you programming its attack posture, but its battle movements, energy usage and how it responds to certain stimuli or situations. This is done in two parts. First there is a basic battle plan, which is simply a matter of selecting primary movements. But you can also get detailed by pulling up what looks like a winfile tree with blocks that can be added to or deleted. The programming is done in a declarative manner; such as if my enemy does this, then I will do this.

It is wise to save your bot before playing in there. You can take a perfectly functioning robot and reduce it to a disoriented mess quite quickly.

After you’ve tinkered with the workings of the bot, you can test it out on a dummy target, in an arena setting that is solidly rendered. You first get a gridded look at what your bot will do, and then the game renders it into an arena, complete with a trash-talking foe (jibberish is what spews from its maw), and all the subtleties of a gladiator’s forum. If your creation destroys the other quickly and effortlessly, you have a winner. If not, it’s back to the drawing board.

Once your robot is ready, you can go online to an international gaming community that is actually engaged in setting up tournaments, and fighting bots. If you have completed in five or less tourneys, you can enter the amateur tourneys – some of these are set way in advance with open admission. You may actually find yourself entered in a battle that won’t take place for more than a week. The amateur tourneys are free to enter, and you can win actual prizes.

Then there is the pro circuit. It costs to enter these tourneys, usually $5 (U.S.) per tourney. But there is money to be won here, up to $100. And you will be ranked. The higher your ranking, the better chance you have to be invited to a “best of the best” tourney with bigger cash prizes.

RoboForge is an intriguing concept, with great graphics and solid game play. This program is multiplayer based with a large online community and many opportunities to enter bots in a number of tournaments. It is possible to outthink and overextend yourself in the building process, but that is where half the entertainment value of this program lies. This is a game that requires players to be creative and intelligent.

If you like building battling bots, then this Liquid Edge Games Ltd. product is right up your alley.

Install: Easy
The download for this game was only 30 Megs. If you are running a slower modem, that might take some time to get, but once you have the program, it installs very quickly.

Gameplay: 8
The shop interface does a nice job of helping players through the fundamentals, though a detailed manual (in hand, not electronic) would have been better to explain exactly what was happening. As for tournaments, bots are programmed and you don’t actually control them in the fights.

Graphics: 8.5.
Excellent three-dimensional shop graphics and solid combat graphical elements make this a delight for the eye.

Sound: 6
There isn’t much here to hear, save in the combat phase, but that is mostly jibberish and metal-on-metal collisions.

Difficulty: 8
The combat isn’t anything you can really do much about. However, the trick and the challenge lie in the programming. Not only do you have to tell the bot to attack, but you have to take a photo of it in its attack mode so it ‘remembers’ what to do. Failing to adequately ‘photograph’ the moves will leave you with a bot that just runs around the arena.

Concept: 8.5
Battling bots is nothing new, but RoboForge has given is a great look and breathed some new ideas into the genre.

Multiplayer: 8.5
This has solid online support, and a big community of players. The only way you can compete is online, and besides that is the purpose of this program – entering tournaments with the robots you build.

Overall: 8.
This product has great graphics, and solid game play. If there is a failing, it is the electronic manual, but the program interface helps guide players through the fundamentals. You can build any number of robots and enter a host of tournaments, and then wait for the results to roll in. This is, more or less, the equivalent of cock fighting taken into the cyber age. And remember, no actual robots were hurt or destroyed during tournament combat.