Gobs & Gears turns factory building into a goblin-powered demolition puzzle
Build it up. Tear it down
- Route resources through 26 types of Building
- Use Trundlers and Gobs to keep production moving
- Out now on iOS for $9.99
The best advice Gobs & Gears gives you is to build it wrong. It may sound counterintuitive, but you lay out a route, rip it up the moment it’s done its job, and blow up the odd building along the way, all to finish a bomb for a goblin king who wants it immediately. It’s a logistics puzzler that’s out now on iPhone.
The map starts under a thick Fog. Just like London has been the past few days. You put up Scout Towers to burn it back in bursts, and each surge reveals lost Buildings that need to be brought back. For that, you need the right resources, which must be hauled around by Trundlers along conveyor routes you lay yourself. And if a mountain gets in your way, just blow it up.
Crafting runs from Rubble at the bottom to the Boom Core at the top, across sixteen resources, six tiers and 26 kinds of Building. Gobs from nearby Gob Camps can speed a building up or carry resources from places your routes haven’t reached yet. The maps are procedurally generated too, with roughly 281 quadrillion possible layouts.
Factory games like these make you live with your mistakes. A messy layout tends to stay messy. Gobs & Gear makes rebuilding the point. I’d say Mini Motorways is the nearest relative, where half the time you’re pulling up the road you placed five minutes ago.
There’s no grinding between runs and no punishing timers either. Given the Gob King’s mood, I thought there’d be a timer. It’s all pixel art, and the building names do a fair bit of the joking, the Smelty Hole and the Dig Pit among them.
Gobs & Gears is out today on iOS for a one-off $9.99 purchase.
If you’d prefer puzzles with fewer explosions, our list of the best strategy games on iOS is mostly bomb-free.
