The Good

Intuitive controls, challenging gameplay, great cartoon look, well themed music.

The Bad

The game is a bit short, not many levels.

Bottom Line

As far as adventure games go, Toy Bot Diaries is the best the iPhone has to offer. If you are a fan of adventure games be sure to pick this one up.

Rating

Genre: Platform, Adventure

Release Date: Sep 3, 2008

Developer: IUGO

Publisher: IUGO

Version: 1.1

Price: $3.99

Toy Bot Diaries for the iPhone was made by IUGO a mobile games developer based in Vancouver Canada. They are best known for their quality work on games such as Tiger Woods PGA Tour ‘07 on the J2ME/BREW mobile platform, and Spiderman 2 on the N-Gage.

Toy Bot Diaries is one of those games that makes you think twice about the viability of side scrollers on the iPhone. I’ve always felt side scrollers had no business on the iPhone due to the Accelerometer/Touchscreen controls. This is one of those situations where I was delighted to be proven wrong, Toy Bot Diaries did a great job using a mixture of both touch/accel controls.

Movement of the bot is controlled by leaning the iPhone to the right or left, the iPhone should be held in landscape mode and upright.

The second move is the grappling hook that allows you to swing from one point to another, this move is executed by a simple tap on a metal object, to retract the grapple hook instead of a quick tap, tap and hold down, to release the grapple hook just tap away from the hook. Once you get more comfortable with the grappling hook move, you’ll be able to perform consecutive swings Tarzan style.

The bot can also magnetize his boots to help him stay connected to metal objects, whether it be metal walls, gears or coins, this move is executed by tapping on your bot to turn it on and tapping it a second time to turn it off.

Instead of trying to make the game look as real as possible, which can be extremely tough on any mobile platform due to limited graphics horsepower, the game instead goes for a more cartoony look and does an excellent job at that. The images in this post are taken directly from the game so you can get a good idea of what to expect graphically.

The music is rather catchy and goes well with the theme of the game, you can hear the music and sound effects in the YouTube video I posted.

I highly recommend Toy Bot Diaries for any iPhone owner that loves a good platform based game.

Toy Bot Diaries is available in the App Store for $3.99.