Watch This Lego Robot Play Freemium Games On An iPad [Video]

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Ever think that the majority of freemium iOS games are basically mindless tap-fests, with demands only for cold hard cash, and none for meaningful strategy?

Take Jurassic Park Builder, for instance: a game I reviewed back in January, and was forced to grudgingly admit was “effectively FarmVille with velociraptors” thanks to in-app purchases (IAPs).

The game looks nice enough but — unless you’re happy to cough up money to get goals done quicker — all it asks of players is to tap the screen every few minutes to check on their dinosaurs or earn in-game currency.

If that sounds the kind of job a dumb robot could do, you’re not wrong — that same idea occurred to senior art director and amateur robot builder, Uli Kilian, who built a Lego robot to carry out the task for him.

Killian’s Lego robot, powered by an Arduino board and connected to a Windows computer, was created to play Jurassic Park Builder on his iPad while he slept. In the process he saved himself time and, more importantly, money by tapping different parts of the screen at regular intervals to collect the rewards from his stable of dinosaurs.

When is a game not a game? Presumably some time between the arrival of IAPs, and the point at which you construct a robot to play it for you.

Source: Wired

 

 

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