Robot Factory Review

For all the imagination in kids’ creativity apps, they can feel oddly constrained. Once you’ve built the cookie/doll/car, what’s it for? Just taking a photo seems a sad end to the rollercoaster of creation. That’s where Robot Factory aims to fix things.

You start with various bot bodies, to which you can attach a selection of limbs, heads, and features. There are few rules: anything can go pretty much anywhere, allowing for creations from the cute to the chilling. You can even customize the sounds your droid makes using the microphone.

There’s plenty of diversity, but that’s par for the course in apps like this. The added interest should be in the next step, where you test your new robot in a countryside course with realistic physics. Shrubs catch, rocks roll and slopes slope. The challenge is to see how far you get before your creation runs out of health.

The course is a welcome addition, but it feels somewhat aimless. Watching even the oddest robots stumble along becomes tedious due to repetitive terrain. The movement controls are almost too simple, trying to direct a variety of legs, wings, and thrusters through simple screen taps. They feel clumsy and confusing. Still, it’s an improvement on just keeping your bots in a digital showcase. 

Robot Factory isn’t for everyone. Younger children may find it daunting and others will quickly tire of the course. For budding quality testers, however, it’s hard to imagine a better sandbox.

The bottom line. Offers lots of fuel for the imagination, but the test course tests little aside from patience.