Hello everyone. Today I want to quickly go over 2 stealth puzzle games on mobile I really liked and recently completed. Robbery Bob 1: Man of Steal and Robbery Bob 2: Double Trouble
Let's start with the first game. RB1 is a top down stealth puzzle game where you play as the titular Bob. The story has Bob getting into trouble and needing to help out a figure by breaking into houses and stealing a particular item and then escaping. Bob's basic controls are that you can slowly sneak by moving the left virtual stick, run by holding a Run button while moving which makes sound which nearby NPCs can hear and is limited by Bob's stamina. You also have buttons for any contextual actions like boxes to hide in or items to use. One cool ability Bob has is a "fast forward" button which speeds up the game allowing you to speed up some tedious parts of stealth games like waiting for an enemy to pass which keeps the game flowing well.
And that's mostly it. Most of the challenges in levels comes from the creative way levels are laid out. Levels contain multiple rooms containing various traps, cameras, guards, dogs etc. and from additional challenges within levels. If the player is seen, an alarm is triggered where guards come swarming in and if they catch Bob, the level ends and you have to retry. Levels are generally quite short, clocking in around less than 2 minutes each making retries fairly quick and painless.
Levels themselves can be quite fun to crack using Bob's basic moveset as you look for the pattern between guards and cameras and sneak past. Each level has 3 optional objectives that award bonus stars upon completion. These are to complete a level without ever getting spotted, steal all x items in the level and complete the level under a specified time. Though, I found that was pretty easy to do in RB1. I occasionally had to some replay levels to get the "find all items" one but for the most part, it was kinda easy to get all 3 bonus stars in one run. Still, the levels themselves are quite varied and the difficulty curve does ramp up well.
The game also gets a lot of mileage out of its basic moveset. For example, if you run into a door, Bob slams it open which can attract guards from far away allowing you to lure away guards from their posts. Or if a pet dog sees Bob, they will instantly take a liking to Bob and slowly walk towards him which barking which can draw attention. Bob would need to close a door on the dog to break line of sight which can solve certain puzzles in levels such as getting pet Dogs to follow Bob and bark to attract guards away from their posts. Guard Dogs chase Bob on sight and will cause a mission fail if they catch him so the trick is to have them chase Bob until their leash is extended and then wrap around so their leash gets tied around furniture in a level so they get stuck. Some Levels can have teleporters and conveyors which you have to push a box onto and hide in as it moves past the visions of certain cameras and guards.
Bob doesn't have any normal ways of taking out enemies so the game encourages the player to try and ghost their way through levels which is a lot of fun. There are optional items in the game like a decoy mouse which can lure enemies away or a rotten doughnut that if an NPC sees, they will consume it and then immediately run for the nearest restroom. These can be bought with the money Bob earns from stealing items during levels or purchases via microtransactions. There's also a basic upgrade system that allows Bob to upgrade his reach, sneaking speed and stamina with coins that do help make later levels more manageable.
Being a free to play game, the game has implemented some monetization practices. For one, the game quite likes to bombard you with frequent ads. I mostly played this game when my phone had WiFi turned off as a result. The other is that you can buy items and costumes to help as stated earlier. But fortunately, I never found them to be necessary. There are some additional level packs you can buy if you want but I found the base game to be more than sufficient for me.
The story is quite charming and silly. Namely consisting of Bob being forced to break into and steal various items for other characters such as Divorce papers, an MMO disc in beta (good luck playing that mate), leggings etc. Some of the comedy comes from Bob misinterpreting what was asked of him. Such as Bob mistaking what he's supposed to steal for a wedding shower and stealing shampoo. The story not being too serious does allow it to be a nice bit of levity in between levels. Each set of levels is broken up into chapters consisting of a different character Bob needs to help for whatever reason. Each Chapter also consists of a motion comic with no dialogue establishing what's going on (with some nice art) with the levels themselves containing basic but still charming dialogue between the characters.
So yeah, that's Robbery Bob 1: Man of Steal. The game also has a free to play sequel on mobile called Robbery Bob 2: Double Trouble. Sadly, there aren't 2 Bobs like the title would suggest. It feels like "More Robbery Bob content". Which isn't a bad thing.
The first main change I found, and immediately disliked, were the controls. RB1 used a floating virtual stick which meant that no matter where your left thumb was, as long as it was somewhere to the left of the phone, you could control Bob's movement. But RB2 makes it such that the left stick is fixed to a specific point on the bottom left side of the screen. I found it rather hard at first to adjust since I would place my thumb a bit higher than where the controls were located and either Bob would not move or move up. I did eventually get used to it but I would have loved an option to switch to RB1's controls here.
Aside from that, RB2 is quite the step up in challenge and variety from the first game. The optional challenges that were quite easy to get in the first game are now much tighter in the sequel. Even getting the "complete under x seconds" one requires full on speedrun strats at times. I found myself often being happy just getting 1 or 2 stars and moving on.
Though, the game makes getting 3 stars more important now. Later missions now require a certain number of stars collected to be unlocked. As opposed to the prior game where just completing the level was enough. In addition, some levels you get 3 stars in unlock a "secret" version that you can replay with a modifier attached like "once you get the main treasure, Bob leaves footprints behind and makes loud noises", "Bob occasionally sneezes or falls asleep" or "Bob needs to collect puppies instead of treasure". These levels only judge you on time to complete. So there's a lot more content and challenge for the player this time around.
Levels are also more varied. Some levels have a new gimmick where Bob can mind control certain pet dogs using a machine and use them to draw attention and lure guards to certain rooms or buttons.
The game also changes how upgrades are handled. Instead of purchasing flat upgrades, you now collect suits/costumes that give an individual perk and upgrade that instead. Personally, I kinda dislike this change. It makes Bob feel weaker and less capable because you can only upgrade one of his traits at a time. Plus, given how expensive the other suits are and how much harder the levels are, it makes the experience a lot less fun.
So yeah, that's the Robbery Bob games. They are also available on Steam and on Apple TV. I haven't played the Steam version but I have tried out the Apple TV version and found the text in that version to be scaled really small. As someone with rather poor eyesight, I wouldn't recommend that version.
Still, I'd recommend checking both games out. They are free and aren't too massive downloads. They are a really fun series of stealth puzzles. Just, make sure you have your WiFi switched off when you play them.
Next up for me is probably all of the Spider-Man games on Nintendo DS. See you then.
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