Toy Bot Diaries is a series of games specifically designed for the iPhone/iPod Touch.  The series now consists of three installments telling the story of one small bot out to save the world.  Toy Bot Diaries 3 is the final installment of this now beloved series and it delivers.

If you haven’t played the first two installments, I recommend you go and download them immediately.  The story of Toy Bot is just too cute and entertaining not to fully experience.  Toy Bot must traverse space and all sorts of other snazzy backdrops to defeat his enemy War Bot.  The story is told through a series of snapshots like a comic book.  It is done with great style and overall cuteness through six chapters of platforming goodness.

The backdrops vary from space, industrial planets, and a few other crisp looking environments.  The game was specifically designed for the iPhone/iPod Touch and the production values are high.  The graphics are great, none of the objects are difficult to discern so you are able to quickly comprehend what is asked of you.

The controls consist of tilting and tapping the screen.  Toy Bot utilizes a magnetic grappling hook that can connect to anything metal.  You can adjust how long or short your rope is to accomplish specific tasks.  Tap the area you want your magnet to latch onto, tap an open area on the screen to detach.  Toy Bot’s momentum can be shifted by tilting your device back and forth to defeat puzzles and get to hard to reach areas.  Toy Bot also has magnetic boots to attach to most surfaces in which you can control him by tilting the device.  Since the game was designed for the iPhone/iPod Touch, most of these controls perform extremely well.  There is a small learning curve to get used to the grappling function, but after the first chapter, you will have the hang of it.

Gameplay starts out simple to introduce you to Toy Bot’s controls.  The game doesn’t hold your hand overly long, before you know it you are trying to conquer puzzles without much of a hint.  Some of the puzzles require quite a bit of thought but nothing that will make you want to throw your iPhone in a fit of rage.  Thinking before doing is important here, there are clues to what needs to be done within the terrain.  Once you put it all together it just makes sense.

Memory modules are placed randomly in every chapter.  You are able to see how many you have grabbed when you go to the chapter select area just in case you want to go back and find every last one of them.  Some are hidden in the corners of the maps so you can explore every nook and cranny of every map if you choose to.  Since there are checkpoints in each area it sometimes is difficult to get all of the modules.  If you finally get that extremely difficult module and die before the next checkpoint that module isn’t saved.  This becomes even more of an annoyance when there are multiple difficult modules before a single checkpoint.

The game is quite long to justify the cost.  Each entry of Toy Bot Diaries is priced at $3.99.  If you intend to play each entry that will cost you $11.97 plus tax.  There isn’t any multiplayer or scoring elements but the length of the game makes it worth your while.  If you intend to find every last memory module you will be spending a ton of time in Toy Bot Diaries.

Toy Bot Diaries 3 has some of my favorite sounds in any App Store game I have played to date.  It just adds to the overall cuteness of the entire product.  Toy Bot sort of sounds like a Furby, if you can imagine that.

I hate to say cute so many times in a single review but the game oozes it.  Don’t be deterred by this because Toy Bot Diaries 3 has a mass amount of gameplay depth that will make you appreciate the developers designing this one from the ground up.  It’s overall polish and control scheme work very well for the iPhone/iPod touch.  If you are looking for a new twist on the platforming genre Toy Bot Diaries is a great choice.

Overall: 9 out of 10

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