Bot Colony appeared rather promising when it released on Steam as part of the Early Access programme last year. It aimed to be the first game where you truly interacted with the characters through holding conversations with them. But it wasn’t until this month that the potential of this system was was hinted at through an update that introduced a need to pry information out of one of the characters .

The task was to gain access to 14 recorded videos in an attempt to piece together the events of the last 48 hours in the home of a Nakagawa Robot Corp. employee. To do this required talking to Jimmy, a robot servant left in the house. And when I say talking, I actually mean talking. Either through speech recognition with a microphone or typing, Jimmy was capable of responding to questions posed in naturally flowing English.

This certainly makes a refreshing change to only selecting from predefined dialogue options. And had the potential of revolutionizing interaction with game characters. Unfortunately, Bot Colony will cease to be playable in mid March. The result of not enough units being sold to cover the cost of running the server that processes the speech input, let alone paying for further development.

There was a lot of promise in Bot Colony, and anyone interested in seeing that should check the store page on Steam. While no longer purchasable, one of the videos does cover the story as it would have unfolded. It is a shame that Bot Colony slipped under the radar, a likely victim of Steam’s increasing release schedule and lack of promotion. Had it done well it could have been a hit. When the game shuts down, I’m going to miss my conversations with Jimmy.

Bot Colony appeared rather promising when it released on Steam as part of the Early Access programme last year. It aimed to be the first game where you truly interacted with the characters through holding conversations with them. But it wasn’t until this month that the potential of this system was was hinted at through an update that introduced a need to pry information out of one of the characters . The task was to gain access to 14 recorded videos in an attempt to piece together the events of the last 48 hours in the home of a Nakagawa Robot Corp. employee. To do this required talking to Jimmy, a robot servant left in the house. And when I say talking, I actually mean talking. Either through speech recognition with a microphone or typing, Jimmy was capable of responding to questions posed in naturally flowing English. This certainly makes a refreshing change to only selecting from predefined dialogue options. And had the potential of revolutionizing interaction with game characters. Unfortunately, Bot Colony will cease to be playable in mid March. The result of not enough units being sold to cover the cost of running the server that processes the speech input, let alone paying for further development. There was a lot of promise in Bot Colony, and anyone interested in seeing that should check the store page on Steam. While no longer purchasable, one of the videos does cover the story as it would have unfolded. It is a shame that Bot Colony slipped under the radar, a likely victim of Steam’s increasing release schedule and lack of promotion. Had it done well it could have been a hit. When the game shuts down, I’m going to miss my conversations with Jimmy.