One very popular game over on Steam this year has been a game called Gladiabots from developer Sébastien Dubois aka GFX47. It’s a really interesting concept where you assemble a team of robots and then design your very own AI routine for them before sending the squad into an arena to do battle against other robots. Depending on how they perform based on your AI routine you can then tweak the AI and send them back into battle until you’ve perfected your strategy and come out the victor. It’s a very cool idea for a game and uses some basics of programming in a similar fashion to games like Human Resource Machine and while True: learn(). You’ll take your AI programming skills and put them to the test in hundreds of single player missions or online against others in asynchronous multiplayer, and Gladiabots seems like the perfect sort of fit for a mobile game. Which is good because this week GFX47 actually announced that Gladiabots would be coming to iOS on December 14th! Here’s the trailer.

Gladiabots originally began life as a playable prototype several years back, and the lone developer has been fleshing it out in the years since. It’s been available on desktop and Android for the past few years, but in August of last year it was released in Early Access on Steam and then came out of Early Access and released in full just this past May. As I’ve said the desktop version has been critically acclaimed and I think the addition of an iOS version will be a great fit, especially with the robust online offerings and the ability to sync your progress across platforms. If this sort of thing seems up your alley, you can pre-order Gladiabots on the App Store right now for $4.99, which is 30% off the regular price, and look for it to arrive on December 14th.