Starting the game with Bumblebee and Ratchet, additional characters are added as the story progresses, each with unique abilities or characteristics. In the main campaign, players control the heroic Autobots, battling Megatron's forces of villainous Decepticons. Energon allows the player to upgrade or repair units, or to summon additional characters into play. Energy sources provide energon, which acts as the currency for the game. While in robot mode, they gain the ability to attack other Transformers, and to capture structures necessary that produce energy (like pylons). While in vehicle mode, Transformers can travel further, and receive reduced damage, but cannot attack. In order to encourage as much 'transforming' as possible, the player is given the option to turn each robot into their vehicle form (or vice versa) at the end of their turn. Like most Turn-based tactics games, the player controls units (in this case, a cast of 23 Generation 1 Transformers characters) across small-scale, grid-based levels.

The game was developed at Glu's UK office (which was previously the company Macrospace), so they had previous experience with turn-based tactics games, having developed the Ancient Empires games. Instead, each unit was a unique character from the franchise, with individual strengths and attributes based on their existing personas.

They compared their game to the Advance Wars series, but explained that it differed in that the units were not 'expendable cannon fodder'. In an interview with fan site, Glu Mobile EMEA studio head Chris White and Awakening Product Manager Martin Edelman explained that their desire to make such a game was based on their admiration for the 1986 animated film, as well as for the Marvel Comics series. Unlike the film adaptations, Awakening was planned as a turn-based tactics game with role-playing elements, with a story set in the early days of the 1980s animated series. As the next Transformers film, Revenge of the Fallen, would not be released until 2009, Glu decided to maximize their licensing agreement by producing a game that wasn't tied to a major release. This was the second Transformers game from Glu Mobile they had released a platform game for mobile phones based on Michael Bay's 2007 live-action Transformers film. Transformers G1: Awakening was announced at BotCon 2008 with a worldwide release set for Fall of that year.

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