Review: RoboSockets (iOS)

Puzzle Games in the App Store are a dime a dozen. You need to stand out from the crowd in order to grab gamers’ attention. One of the latest in the fold is RoboSockets from the fine folks at Tatem Games. Mixing the tried-and-true match-three gameplay with that of Tetris-style block dropping, your goal is help the robot world restore power. While I’ve grown tired of plenty of casual puzzles games lately, RoboSockets has been a go-to game for me over the past week.

RoboSockets consists of robots dropping that have to be linked in a chain of at least five to create power for the world. Matching enough robots to fill your power meter will push you from level to level, while the difficulty ramps up steadily. The beauty of RoboSockets, and one of the biggest sources of frustration, is your lack of control in what robots are coming your way. Each robot has up to four arms extending in cardinal directions. To link a chain of robots, they need to hold hands. If five robots drop in a row that don’t line up with your ideal robot-stacking-scheme, you’re screwed. You can’t rotate robots like Tetris, so place carefully. Power-ups appear as you progress, such as magnets that push robots left or right and drills that clear out entire rows, among others. You’ll want to bank up powers to save you from failing levels here and there.

RoboSockets received an update this week that brought native iPad support. It also made the game beatable, as a game-breaking glitch was in the initial version that made some of the final levels impossible to pass. For $0.99, it’s a great deal for a solid universal puzzle game. While it won’t be in heavy rotation on your iOS device for months, it’s plenty of entertainment to make it worth your buck.