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=                           Robot_Odyssey                            =
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                            Introduction
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'Robot Odyssey' is a digital logic game developed by Mike Wallace and
Dr. Leslie Grimm and published by The Learning Company in December
1984. It is a sequel to 'Rocky's Boots', and was released for the
Apple II, TRS-80 Color Computer, and MS-DOS. The player is readying
for bed when, suddenly, they fall through the floor into an
underground city of robots, 'Robotropolis'. The player begins in the
sewers of the city with three programmable robots, and must make their
way to the top of the city to try to find their way home again. Most
players have found it challenging.


                              Gameplay
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The aim of 'Robot Odyssey' is to program and control robots (Sparky,
Checkers, and Scanner with a fourth added in later levels) in order to
escape 'Robotropolis', a labyrinthine underground city filled with
hundreds of rooms of puzzles that need to be solved to progress any
further. The city consists of five levels of increasing difficulty,
requiring the design of more and more sophisticated circuits.

A tutorial and robot testing laboratory (the "Innovation Lab") are
also provided with the game.


Except for their color and initial programming, the three robots are
identical inside. They are equipped with four thrusters and bumper
sensors, a grabber, a radio antenna (for basic communication with
other robots), a battery, and a periscope to use while riding inside a
robot.

Throughout the game, the player is presented with various challenges
which require programming the three robots to accomplish various
tasks. This is done by wiring a synchronous digital circuit,
consisting of logic gates and flip-flops, inside of the robots. Tasks
and puzzles range from navigating a simple maze and retrieving items
to complex tasks requiring interaction and communication between two
or more robots. Though the player can ride inside the robots, most
challenges involve the robots acting autonomously and cannot be
completed with the player inside (and perhaps simply rewiring their
robot on the fly).

The robots can also be wired up to chips, which provide a convenient
and reproducible way to program the robots. Various pre-programmed
chips are scattered throughout the city and range from complex
circuits such as a wall-hugging chip which can be used to navigate
through mazes and corridors (one of which is wired to a robot at the
beginning) to clocks and counters. The player must find out how these
chips work themselves, as the only information about each chip is a
short, and sometimes cryptic, description. Additionally, there are
predesigned chip files stored on the various disks containing the game
that can be loaded into the in-game chips. The available chips stored
in this fashion vary depending on the port or version used.

The 'Innovation Lab' can be used to test out circuit designs in the
robots or create new chips. Chips created in the lab can then be
loaded into and used in the main game. Loading a chip in the main game
will erase the previous programming stored in the chip.

Although the game is recommended for ages 10 and up, it can prove to
be quite challenging even for adults. In terms of educational value,
the game teaches the basic concepts of electrical engineering and
digital logic in general.


                             Reception
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'Computer Gaming World' reviewed 'Robot Odyssey' and 'ChipWits',
preferring the former to the latter but stating that both were
"incredibly vivid simulation experiences".


                               Legacy
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The engine for the game was written by Warren Robinett, and variants
of it were used in many of The Learning Company's graphical adventure
games of the time, including 'Rocky's Boots', 'Gertrude's Secrets',
'Gertrude's Puzzles', and 'Think Quick!', all of which are similar but
easier logic puzzle games. The gameplay and visual design were derived
from Robinett's influential Atari 2600 video game, 'Adventure'.

'ChipWits' by Doug Sharp and Mike Johnston, a 1984 game for Macintosh
later ported to the Apple II, and Commodore 64 computers, is similar
in theme but the player's robot behaviour is programmed with actions
blocks instead of using logic flops, switches, etc.

Epsitec Games created 'Colobot' and 'Ceebot' for Windows. The player
programs machines through object-oriented programming like Java, C++,
or C# to accomplish puzzle tasks. The objective of these games was to
teach the player the fundamentals of these languages.

'Carnage Heart' involves programming mechas that then fight without
any user input.

Cognitoy's 'MindRover' is also similar in spirit to 'Robot Odyssey',
but uses different programming concepts in its gameplay.


Clones
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One Girl One Laptop productions created a free to download spiritual
successor, for Windows and MacOS, called 'GATE' which uses the same
digital logic puzzles as 'Robot Odyssey'.

There is also a clone that can be run in any system with a Java
runtime, 'DroidQuest', which contains all the original levels and an
additional secret level.


                          Further reading
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* 'Escape from Robotropolis' - 1988 book by Fred D'Ignazio, published
by TOR ()


                              See also
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* 'Armored Core: Formula Front'
* 'Armored Core: Verdict Day', featuring UNACs, AI controlled Armored
Cores which players can create and customize
* 'BASIC STUDIO Powerful Game Koubou', a 2001 PS2 game creation title
by Artdink featuring a sample game based on their title 'Carnage
Heart'
* 'Breeder', a 1986 Famicom algorithm-based simulation combat game by
SoftPro
* 'ChipWits'
* 'COMSIGHT', a 1987 PC88, X1, and X68000 algorithm-based simulation
combat game by Technosoft
* 'MindRover'
* 'Omega (video game)'
* 'Pandora Project: The Logic Master', a 1996 PS1 algorithm-based
simulation combat game by Team Bughouse similar to 'Carnage Heart'
* 'Robot X Robot', a 1999 PS1 algorithm-based simulation combat game
by Nemesys
* 'RoboSport'
* Logic simulation


                           External links
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*
* [http://www.droidquest.com/ droidquest.com] - a reimplementation in
Java
* [https://scanlime.org/2009/04/a-binary-patch-for-robot-odyssey/ A
binary patch for running 'Robot Odyssey' on modern computers]
* [https://scanlime.org/2009/04/robot-odyssey-chip-disassembler/
'Robot Odyssey' chip disassembler]
* [https://robotodyssey.online/ A version playable in the browser]
* [https://archive.org/details/msdos_Robot_Odyssey_1985 Disk image]
from Internet Archive


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