Automatoys 4+

I don’t understand the guy I saw saying £1.99 was too much. It’s a bargain. It’s very entertaining, very “just one more try” and how long it will take you depends on your skill, some show offs here saying too easy, and others saying too difficult and they gave up, I think it’s spot-on, and my 8 year old son has been having hours of fun with it too. The design is very clever and the lofi music is really relaxing. In the tip jar part it says “help me make more games” implying one person is behind this, so for a small creator I think it’s impressive and I hope more games are on the way.

As an engineering student, I was endlessly fascinated by these levels. Each one is unique, bringing a new challenge to the table, and keeping the player in the optimal flow state - not too easy, while not exceedingly hard.

I love the star system, and seeing the timer while playing the level is a nice touch; other games with similar time-based star levels generally only show you your score upon completion.

However, and this is probably because of how much I like the star rating system and my tendency to ace each level with 3* before moving on, I was quite annoyed when I saw that the game does not actually save your star rating after finishing a level. On the level menu, when finishing a level, I see the grey stars above the level graphic flash yellow for a split second, showing my score, then immediately revert to grey again. This bug occurs on both my iPad and iPhone, and I have the paid version with all levels. It must be a bug, otherwise why would the levels show the stars above them if not to showcase the player’s historical best star rating?

In any case, I’m sure it was a minor oversight, and certainly doesn’t take away from the experience of this delightful game itself.

This game is truly unique which is rare for a game on the AppStore but (and it’s a very big but) it lacks in any sort of replay-ability and is very short.

It reminds me of a game I used to play as a kid where you had to do the same thing but it was a board game/toy. There’s some nostalgia that the game brings but once it’s done, it’s done. There are 12 levels for £2.99 which in theory can be completed in a few minutes (or less) and after and when you’ve got 3 stars you might as well delete the game. It doesn’t draw me back to play it, there’s no secret levels or ways to complete each level and you feel a bit cheated when you finish everything. If there was some reassurance from the devs that there were more levels coming then I’d keep it, but at the moment it feels like a quick money maker for them.