Killbots

Killbots is an extended implementation of the older UNIX game robots by Ken Arnold. The player is chased by robots trying to kill him. The goal is to survive until all robots are dead. In this turn-based program the player can move his avatar in all eight directions over the board. In each round, the robots make a step in the direction of the player. If they touch him, the game is over. But the robots are also deadly to themselves: if they touch each other, they turn into a pile of garbage and this pile is also deadly for other robots. So to kill the robots, the player has to move that the robots touch each other or running into garbage piles. If there is no way out, the player can teleport to a randomly location on the board. Teleporting is consuming energy, which can be refilled by destroying robots or completion of a level.

Killbots implements additional game elements taken from the game Gnome Robots, like fast-bots, which can move two fields in a round and save teleports, in which the destination cannot be directly beside a robot. Another addition is the vaporizer, which lets you destroy robots. Also junk piles may be pushed. There are five game modes, which feature different rule sets, the additional features and have different board sizes and also differ in the energy consumption. There is one mode with the same rule set and board sizes like in the original game, a mode in which the energy cannot be refilled, a mode with the vaporizer to use. Another mode mimics the rule set of the Apple game Daleks. And there is a beginner mode, in which the board is randomly filled with garbage. There are four different graphical tile sets including one with the graphics of the text console display of the original game.

A high-score table can be reached.