Video Game where you program small robots on a space station using wired components

Question

I believe I bought my copy in college, between 2002 and 2006. It was a hardcopy manual, and a CD as I recall it. The premise is that some workers on a space station (I'm pretty sure it was a space station... completely sure that the setting was not on Earth, but a group of isolated workers) have gotten bored, and compete in programming contests with small robots on the station. The robots had limited area on which to place components in a grid setup, whereupon you'd wire the components together. I remember there were various tasks, generally solo, things like navigating a maze (I know it had one of these... I think with mouse-sized robots?) or running around and picking up objects. There were a few competitive tasks, one involving kind of a battle-bots setup where rather than programming the robots, you got a joystick interface for them.

The game came with a manual that had ring binding (the plastic spiral kind) but I remember that they also had online documentation in the (then unfamiliar to me) wiki format, where people could offer edits. I remember there was also a modding community, with someone providing an additional weapon for the arena combat that was essentially a handgun duct-taped upside-down on the robot.

The graphics were 3D, I think simple textures with more or less flat shading. Interface was a mixture of mouse and keyboard. I remember being really enthused about it because it seemed like there were immense possibilities, but I got bogged down in the difficulty of wiring the components together. I remember being particularly frustrated with the maze one because I understood the right-hand rule to navigate a maze, but couldn't figure out how to translate that to the components.

Answer 1

So, I found it by more or less sheer happenstance. I was in our laundry room, which also has bookshelves with old books. I saw a book with the plastic ring binding, and pulled it out on impulse, and found that it was a manual for MindRover: the Europa Project, released in 2000 by Cognitoy.

MindRover is one of the most original and replayable games I've ever come across that unfortunately isn't selling like hotcakes for lack of advertisement and reviews in well-known game magazines. Ignore the insipid sci-fi plot: this is a robot-building game of your dreams. MindRover lets you build a robotic car from the chassis up to fulfill a variety of goals (such as beating your opponent in a race or making your way through an obstacle course), and compete in battle arenas.

The fun and addictive quality of the game lies in the absolute freedom you have in building your robot: there are approximately sixty different components you can bolt onto the chassis, (plus more you can download from the MindRover website), and you can use as many components as the number of component spots. Some components, such the engines and radar, are critical for every mission. Optional but extremely useful are mission-specific components such as the loot detector for "capture the flag" levels, rocket launcher for the deathmatch levels, and sensors to zoom around driving over your opponent's goal. Missions range from the mundane to the creative: my favorite ones are where you must program your robot to play hockey, and where you have to hide from the opponents. The game's AI isn't very intelligent, since the computer's robots use the same wiring and components that your own do. Fortunately, you can change this default setting to any robot-- even an identical copy of your own.

In short, MindRover is a tinkerer's dream come true that's bound to keep any puzzle or strategy fan addicted for hours. There's a real sense of accomplishment in building your own robot and tweaking it to not only finish the mission, but finish it in a spectacular manner (the game's excellent 3D-accelerated graphics and camera angles make viewing your victory a lot of fun). With its excellent modelling of logic and mechanical parts, MindRover is also as educational as it is entertaining. Two thumbs up!

Gameplay