Terminal5

Terminal5 is a spacial relationship oriented puzzle game that is much akin to the board game RoboRally in a puzzle format.

In this game you control a robot and have to navigate through the board to get to the end square. Naturally, some of the squares have stuff on them that does stuff such as move you a spot forward, fire a laser, or rotate you. So, to get a better idea let's take a look at a screenshot. At the bottom of the screen you have preassigned number of each possible move (forward, rotate left, rotate right, and u-turn) to use to get through each level. Above that you have a list of 'commands' you have assigned to your robot for the round... in this case a forward, rotate left, forward... etc. Above that is the board and your robot is along the bottom just one square over from the left side of the board. The green plus in the upper left is where you have to get to. I won't go into too much detail as to what everything on the board does, but, for example, if you moved forward onto the yellow, curved arrow it would automatically rotate you and move you forward an extra space before your next move executes. The idea in RoboRally is that you're programming your robot with multiple steps at a time to get through the level. Along the top, the 6 indicates you have 6 rounds (or 6 sets of 8 commands) in which to finish the level. The 1 is your life. Some levels give you multiple lives so that you could, for example, deal with one laser blast, but not two.

The complexity of this game is contained within each puzzle. The game includes an excellent tutorial mode that explains what the different objects on the board do along with some nice, easy 'puzzles' to get you started. The puzzles in the game are substantially more challenging. One, for example, didn't allow me to make any left or right turns. Needless to say, I had to rely on meticulously placed board elements to work my way through the level.

And that's the main problem with the game... it needs more than 28 levels. A simple level designer might even be nice if the game could garner enough of a following such that others were interested in creating levels. I can only hope that additional levels are coming. The game costs 2 euros or about $2.75 so that works itself out to about a dime a level... still relatively inexpensive entertainment as the levels are pretty good. Still, it would be nice if the game didn't end so soon for those of us enjoying it. 4/5 stars for an enjoyable puzzle game that needs a bit more. A lite version of the game is also available for download from the Market.

Here's a link to a video from the developer as well as a link to RoboRally on Amazon if you're interested in a similar, multi-player board game that probably provided some of the inspiration for this Android game and is a lot of fun!