Robbery Bob | |
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Developer(s) | Level Eight |
Publisher(s) | Chillingo (formerly) Level Eight AB (iOS) [1] DECA Games (Android) |
Producer(s) | Johan Westin |
Artist(s) |
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Platform(s) | iOS, Android, Windows |
Release | May 3, 2012
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Genre(s) | Stealth, action |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Robbery Bob: Man of Steal (a pun on man of steel , an epithet associated with Superman, and also known by the subtitle King of Sneak [2] [3] ) is a 2012 stealth action game developed by Swedish [4] studio Level Eight and originally published by Chillingo. In the game, the player controls a robber named Bob and must sneak around houses to complete missions. The game was released for iOS on May 3, 2012, and has been met with a mixed reception for its gameplay and art quality.
Throughout 50 levels, [5] the player controls Bob, the titular player character, from a top-down perspective. Bob must sneak around houses and steal items without being caught. [6] [7] Enemies, including police officers, dogs, and family members, will roam around the house. [7] [8] Bob can put on disguises, hide, change the enemies' direction, [7] and make distractions. [8] [9] The player can run, but it will lure enemies towards them. [9] The level ends once they are out of the house, and stars grade the player's performance based on speed and accuracy. [9] On May 3, 2012, Chillingo released Robbery Bob for iOS. [6] [8]
Aggregator | Score |
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Metacritic | 71/100 [10] |
Publication | Score |
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Pocket Gamer | 3.5/5 [9] |
TouchArcade | 3.5/5 (Robbery Bob) [7] 4/5 (Robbery Bob 2) [11] |
Paste | 7/10 [8] |
Gamezebo | 70/100 [5] |
The game has a "mixed or average" score on Metacritic. [10]
The gameplay was received poorly. In a TouchArcade review, Brendan Saricks felt that the game's sneaking mechanic went from "real strong" to "a repetitive room-by-room hunt". [7] Saricks compared Robbery Bob to the 2011 video game The Last Rocket, criticizing that the game mechanics did not go together and that the gameplay was luck-based. [7] James Nouch of Pocket Gamer thought the controls were "clumsy", [9] while AJ Dellinger of Gamezebo thought they were "pretty fluid". [5] Although he thought the dialogue was "cringeworthy", Dellinger found that the story was "intense", writing about the crimes Bob commits in the game. [5]
Robbery Bob's art style was met with criticism. Luke Larsen of Paste magazine described it as "tacky", presented through "cartoonish antics" and "forgettable characters". [8] Dellinger said the graphics mostly consisted of smoothed "pixels from the '90s", and he stated that the plants were "drawings from kindergarteners". [5]
A sequel, titled Robbery Bob 2: Double Trouble, was released on June 3, 2015. [12] TouchArcade rated it four out of five stars, with reviewer Chris Carter praising it for filling a niche for heist games and focusing on stealth over action while criticizing the story’s premise as "stupid" and the art design as "forgettable". [11]