Controllers and Cupcakes

What’s New?

The latest build of Very Angry Robots Android Edition has a different controller. Rather than being a twin-stick shooter, it is now a single stick shooter, with fire and move being controlled by the same virtual joystick.

This came about as a lucky accident, as I was part way through trying out a different control method for firing and overlaid the firing controller on top of the movement controller. I continued to play and found that it all of a sudden had become much easier, so much so that I got a new high score.

The best strategy for playing with the new controller seems to be to stay relatively still and to fire by tapping the controller in the direction that you want to fire in, moving only to avoid robots and bullets, rather than being constantly on the move. There’s a small dead zone in the middle of the controller for movement, but there’s no such dead zone for firing, so with practice it’s possible to stay perfectly still while firing.

I also reduced the speed of the robots’ shots, because I felt that it just got too hard too quickly.

As a result of these two simple changes the game has suddenly become much more playable, so much so that I added it as a shortcut on one of my home screens and played it several times today trying to beat my own high score. That’s a good feeling – when you look up and realise that you’ve spent half an hour playing a 3 minute game because you’ve mentally said the words, “just one more go” a few times too many.

Download the latest build

To download the latest build, scan or click the QR code below.

I should also mention that this build now works on Android 1.5 (Cupcake). According to the latest figures only 7% of Android phones use it, but given that my wife’s phone is one of them I was somewhat obliged to try. The game runs appallingly slowly on her LG GW620, but at least it runs. Needless to say, it’s super-smooth on my Nexus One.

Feedback

As always, I welcome feedback, even if you just want to tell me that you’ve beaten my best score (which now stands at 6590). If you have a phone with a relatively slow processor or no GPU then how well does the game run? Is it playable and, more importantly, do you like it?