Robo Rush Hour by michaelaranda

It's rush hour, and thousands of robots need to get to work! Help them cram into the limited space available on the subway trains!
There are two version of the game available below: - The Jam Version is what we completed during the game jam. If you're rating our game, rate this one! - The Post-Jam Version is what we've worked on since the jam ended, adding things we didn't get to before the deadline. This version is both more fun and easier to play!
Controls
- Move robot up/down: [W]/[S] or [arrow key up]/[arrow key down]
- Rotate robot counterclockwise/clockwise: [Q]/[E] or [,]/[.] or [left-click]/[right-click]
- Launch robot left/right: [A]/[D] or [arrow key left]/[arrow key right]
- Pause: [P] or [ESC]
Credits
- Oliver Wright: Design, Programming
- Amanda Valent: Voice Acting
- Steve McStevenson: Design, Programming
- Juliestrator: Design, 3D Modeling
- Michael Aranda: Design, Music, Audio, Programming
Screenshots


We hope you enjoy playing our game =3
| Post-Jam Version (Don't Rate This One!) | https://michaelaranda.itch.io/robo-rush-hour |
| Jam Version (Rate This One!) | https://michaelaranda.itch.io/robo-rush-hour-jam-version |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/robo-rush-hour |
Ratings
| Overall | 120th | 4.079⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 143th | 3.974⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 307th | 3.671⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 31th | 4.553⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 54th | 4.513⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 61th | 4.135⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 393th | 3.258⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 241th | 3.917⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 66🗳️ | 52🗨️ |
Still, loved the graphics and the music. The game felt like a solid whole and I wouldn't have guessed it were a game made in 72 hours by the looks of it!
I also really enjoyed how you captured the mood of the train station. It was busy, but also a little chill because of the music.
Well done!
Very enjoyable tetris-like game with a twist (in both gameplay AND narrative)!
The graphics are really neat and clean, from the tetrominos to the UI (very neat!). Game was very self-explanatory which is always nice (I'm personally not a fan of long tutorials!). The tiny screenshake when "dropping" a block was magical, too.
Music was nice, soothing, and very well-made, but during my first round it really got me in this "chill/soothing/relaxed" mood so I was just casually taking my team, looking at positioning, just to realise there was actually a rather tight timer haha. Sound effects were totally on point, and together with all the animations / effects made the game feel very alive.
One thing I did struggle with was seeing the exact blocks and where I'd have space to place new ones, but I have no suggestions on how this could have been altered besides a top-down view; which would've been out of place and not worked with the design you were going for.
Very nicely done, will try and improve my score over time!!
Already got it improved! can do better though!!


Nice spin (*wink wink*) on the tetris genre :) I had some trouble with the perspective and with noticing that I shouldn't place robots in the middle area, but the worst part was on me: I kept wanting to move the robot sideways without hard dropping them 😅 (now I know what people felt when accidentally hard dropping blocks on *my* game)
And even though I ended up missing those at first, I liked how some game features were... how can I say... "embedded" into the world, like the timer being the station clock, the "next piece" being just robots waiting for their turn to enter the car.
i did feel the camera perspective could've been a bit closer to top-down to ease the flow of the game a bit but besides that i enjoyed it :>
p.s. thanks for the twitch raid at the end of the jam juliestrator!
Also very cute designs
A few things could be tweaked/changed (maybe you already did in your post-jam but here it is anyway). I had trouble understanding corresponding drop lines in 3D. Couldn't fullscreen so it was really tiny to see exact spots even with the blue line indicator. I always forgot about the one pixel space at the back of the train and got frustrated a bit.
Imo, time is unnecessary. We have 10 trains and doing our best to squish robots and reach high score can be enough for the difficulty of the game.
Other than that I had fun playing. I might play more but here is how my first run went. Well done!

Visibility of the back rows was a bit hard to decipher with the tilted camera angle. It could be remedied by having the camera fully top down or by some visual clues like outlines or markings on the ground showing the tiles that are clear with different style etc. UI was a bit rough in contrast to the 3D visuals, but that's understandable for a game jam. + It seems that you have already fixed some of these in the post-jam version.
More gameplay variety in terms of different shapes and sizes for the carriages and adjustments to the overall gameplay loop could go a long way to make this concept into a full fledged game, but for a jam game what you have is outstanding, fantastic job!