+1 for not downvoting me on my honesty, which, quite frankly, I was expecting to happen en masse.

No problem. And yeah, there were no real glitches to report.

Well, as I said, the problems I had might be problems I have with shooters overall. As much as I love a good puzzle,

I think it's the green light that the marching bots have when you get close, which, now that I think about it, is probably more of a "target-locked" type of thing for the bots. However, green is a color I normally associate with something good happening, hence why I thought....ok, honestly, I'm not sure what I thought was going on. I said I was good at puzzles but I never claimed anything about common sense.

I know, I know, I just have this compulsive desire to destroy every bot there is.

*SPOILER ALERT*
Well, the first one I encountered had some sort of badge on its chest which I aimed for and killed pretty quickly, but the one guarding the blue keycard didn't seem to have that, and just wouldn't die no matter if I aimed at its head, little antenna thing, chest, middle pole attaching the chest to the legs (feet?), the treadmill legs/feet, the guns, nothing. And you'd think that it wouldn't be able to move anymore after slicing the pole in half, but whatever. I can't tell whether that's a glitch or if I just didn't aim properly.
*END OF SPOILER*

I'm not sure that counts as a puzzle. More like just the 3rd law of gaming.
"If there is any item on the screen which seems destructible, even in the remotest sense, you shall, with the greatest of haste, take pains to destroy it in its entirety, without regard to ammunition, danger, usefulness, &c."

I have no idea, I just think it would personally be nice. I don't know if anybody else had this same experience, but when I saw all those health pickups, I left a majority of them behind so I could go back and get them later when I actually needed them. I'm guessing the amount of pickups decreases in hard mode, meaning this would probably be even more useful, especially considering how big the map is. I don't feel like going back and picking through every corner.
Oh, and one more thing I forgot to mention: I kept trying to pickup non-pickup-ables. I assumed the batteries and white...orb...things and trash cans did something (I'll be honest, I was hoping I could hide in the cans or wear them and get mistaken for a robot). Not really a plus or minus, just thought you might like to know all the details of my thought process while playing.

In that case, change it to +0 and raise the score to 5/10.

Yup, I did take that into consideration.

+1 for using this as a teaching opportunity.

I am considering adopting that hobby in the future, depending on some conditions. But I'm more of a strategy games fan.
I do fear falling for one common trap: either spending too much time solving technical problems and ending with a game no one will enjoy (or no game per se, just a tech demo) or overreaching with the game design up to a point where I cannot possibly implement all the features (or wasting time with the wrong ones). Did you struggle with any of these issues?

What file format did you use on your music? I do know about the uncompressed sound files, lossy/lossless compressed formats, MIDI files and "tracker"-like music files (the latter two providing the smaller files). Do you know how the FMOD library store the sound data? I had never heard of it before.

Finally, here is a short story: many years ago, when I was playing Wolfenstein 3D, I got lost. I reach a distinct room with an exit on the left, and another one to the right. I leave using one of those doors after spraying the room with bullets and killing everyone inside. I quickly get lost, and when I reach that same room again, I notice the bodies on the floor. "I was here before! And looking at the direction the dead bodies are facing, I entered the room through this door. Wait! Did I? Man, this is a maze! I'll take this other door, then." Later, I return to the same room. "Wait! These bodies are facing me again?! But I just came from... Wait a minute! [testing by moving around] They have a single sprite for a body? Argh! I need another method!" And I started always taking the left-most door as a way to not get lost so easily.

So here is my suggestions for your next game: if you don't want to do a homage, ignore the bad things of the older games, like the single direction sprites and the maze-like "who builds buildings like that?" levels.

Oh, and once again, thank you for the game!

Well, maybe you have an honest crowd then. You're always going to have your fans and your fanatics, your hats and your haters; however any praise or criticism is always going to be the icing on the cake that makes it perfect.

Ooh, that was a good, but underrated and not so advertised title.
If you knew about mazes, you'd know to put your left hand on the wall and follow it all the way until you either: a) reach the same point; or b) make it out of the maze. If (a) happens, you switch hands and keep your hand on the wall following it all the way repeating step (b) if necessary. If you follow these rules, you'll make it out of any maze.

Just pushed out another update in response to feedback you guys gave!

My strategy was to get a prototype out very quickly (within the first couple weeks, but with all dummy art and all but the most basic features missing) to make sure the core drawing mechanic worked in practice. I then showed this off to help raise interest and attract other people to help me with the project. At that point I drafted a plan of what I reasonably thought my team and I could do in a relatively short timeframe (no absurd features like 100's of levels or a massively advanced engine). I think, especially for your first real game, targeting a short timeframe (e.g. a few months) is a good way to limit yourself and not tempt yourself to go too broad. The next step was to get a great first level up and running as quickly as possible, ignoring the later parts of the game. This way we could get early feedback from others while also making sure that we had a lot of time to iterate on the beginning of the game. Then we worked on the later part of the game, which worked well because at that point we knew the tools and felt comfortable enough to break the mold a little more. When I recognized we were falling behind I added an additional team member to help with the art, and I also started to help out with the pieces of art I could do (although originally I was only supposed to write code). I also decided it was better to put less time and resources into the penultimate section in favor of really focusing on making a great and memorable finale. I hate the fact that so many games have a great start but a poor ending, so I spent quite a lot of time on the finale to make sure it was satisfying.

To elaborate on pitfalls associated with game development, I've worked on several other game projects (led by others) that have failed. Not to say Robokiller is perfect, but I personally am very proud of it, and we got a complete, playable, fun game, which is not the case on these projects. Some major reasons I see projects fail are:
* Caring too much about elegant code (ooh, you have a really nice component-based architecture and your code is beautifully organized, now we have no time to actually make a game or playtest it).
* Focusing primarily on something that you think is really cool but most players won't even care about, at least when they first try your game (great, you have the world's most complex crafting system, but without graphics, sounds, or core gameplay, it's irrelevant).
* Making changes to the code that impact other team members without consulting them. I remember on one project I had put countless hours into scripting a really cool intro for a game, when suddenly the project leader changed the whole codebase from floats to doubles without notifying me, and now nothing in my script worked as it should. I has to spend lots of time redoing it but couldn't get through the whole thing, and I believe the game was eventually released with a broken intro because of this. Worse, I had no time to work on the other parts of the game since I had to spend my time redoing this.
* Making the core gameplay mechanic something that's really hard to implement (often some sort of crazy advanced physics-y thing) and launching into full-scale development before having a fully working prototype of that mechanic. What typically happens here is that the creators never really get it to work right and end up with a mediocre game that's playable but isn't very fun and has nothing really unique.
* Losing interest in the project near the end, being too quick to call it "good enough" and not being willing to take the time and effort to fully polish it. Even if the rest of the team has moved on, become too busy, or lost interest it's really up to the project leader to take the initiative to bring the project to completion. This is one case where perfectionism can be helpful: A good project leader will keep striving to make a game better and better simply because they love it.
* Not making a game you yourself would love to play. It seems obvious but many get this wrong. When making indie games, the cool part is that you have the freedom to make games you think are really fun, even if they don't appeal to many others. This is the opposite of most big-budget AAA games which are designed to appeal to as many people as possible. In order to devote enough time and effort into making a game great you need a burning passion for it, it's not enough just to think it's a "cool idea". And at the end of the day you know you will have succeeded in making a game that at least one person loves, everything else is just icing on the cake. :-)

It falls into the tracker category. Specifically, the XM format. The FMOD sound system is used for many popular commercial games.

Multi-directional sprites would be less confusing, and would allow you to do things like sneak up behind an enemy, but require a LOT of additional art for only a small benefit. In Robokiller, at least every sprite is consistently one-directional. In Wolf3D, Doom etc. sprites were multi-directional when enemies were live and one-directional when they died. I can definitely see how this could be confusing.

It's hard to get away from some element of mazeiness when limited to a Wolf3d-like engine. Once the engine gets to the level of Doom it's easier to avoid this.

Are you going to do reviews like this on the actual game review pages?

I didn't know there were any such things. I honestly considered becoming a professional reviewer once since I have so many games under my belt, but the company I applied to rejected me because of my age (I was under 18 when I applied). I considered making my own website, but I don't have the technical skill to make it look very nice, and, let's be honest, who actually reads those things?

Unfortunately zeogold's review is over twice GOG's character limit by my estimation. :( Never really understood why there had to be such a strict limit...

I do and yes for every game in this site you can make a review for it. Have you tried submitting some of your work or writings to game review sites? Your a pretty funny guy and I like your review style.

I have no real "work" or "writings" so to speak of outside of my game and my random witticisms seen by people who know me. But, hey, if somebody helped me open up a site, I'd totally do it. As far as a pro company, I can't really be hired for money yet since I don't turn 18 until the end of January.
Honestly, my true dream for the future is to do a YouTube series where I do a combination review/playthrough/MST3K-style commentary. Thing is, I lack the recording software and am not too sure on the legality. But, hey, glad to see you like my humor and style!

What legality? If you really want to do youtube then grab a cam, get some software and start recording. It doesn't have to be the best just start doing it. Pewdiepie states that all the time and just have a regular schedule of video releases. Hopefully and with time you'll start to get some followers and as the revenue starts to trickle in, you can upgrade your cam, software and even get fancy lighting and a mic.

You can just upload plays of the games without having some kind of permission?

Yup the problem is the music and copyright issues. There has been one game play video where it was pulled because it was given a bad rating/review from TotalBiscuit and it was a dick move from the developers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD0uQ7R406w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zodLs0w7KRg

Edit-
https://www.youtube.com/yt/copyright/#yt-copyright-education
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1311392