Developer: Bunnycopter
Publisher: Bunnycopter
Platforms: PC, PS4
Tested on: PC
Broken Bots – Review
Broken Bots, the fast-paced action packed top-down shooter of the Belgian development studio Bunnycopter was well-received during the early access stages. Now that the full version of Broken Bots is finally out, we see that this trend continues although the game hasn’t found its way to the big public just yet. A shame because using your trusty robot to utterly destroy others or use your abilities to malfunction them is incredibly fun.
Story
Broken Bots is primarily a multiplayer game and thus the game offers no narrative to explore. During the preview, a solo player campaign mode was lacking but this can be found in the form of the offline game mode “infiltration” in which you need to infiltrate the enemy base and defeat the boss himself. Despite the fact that the game now offers a campaign-like mode, the game is still missing a background story and a storytelling offline game mode. While we would normally shake our head at the lack of this feature, we don’t feel like it’s game-breaking.
Graphics
Visually the game is quite epic as it fits the entire concept of bots fighting in the arena. The bots are looked at from above, offering the player a great top-down view of their surroundings while still maintaining a suitable 3D-like style making your surroundings easier to distinguish. The atmosphere is dark and futuristic with plenty of technical circuits imbedded in the arenas and lights to guide you. Everything simply fits nicely in the concept of the popular TV show Robot Wars.
Each bot has a set of skills and passives and one of the most-used skills is the EMP which causes the bots to malfunction. When you are on the receiving end of the EMP, your vision appears to be in a drunken state with a variation of blending colors which can cause some headaches or even motion sickness. Luckily the durations of these abilities are short-spanned and even though the EMP is a favorite of many, you won’t find yourself on the receiving end too much if you play your cards right.
The main menu is simple but won’t leave you searching for settings. The simplicity of the design continues in the user interface, giving the player a chance to win the game without having to search for their power-ups. A quick glance is more than enough to get the entire picture.
Sound
While the narrative is lacking, the ambiance sound is certainly not. Walking hand-in-hand with the visual aspect of the game, the sound design sounds like a fast-paced up-beat techno soundtrack which does not get lost in translation during the action-packed arenas. The shooter however resembles mechanical sounds which is on par with what you are playing with; robots. A few of the game modes, such as king of the hill, has the location of your objective changing every once in a while. A clear voice booms through the soundtrack and shoot-outs to let you know the location has been moved. A text-based warning is also added for those who’d rather not play with sound although the sound design is quite balanced in terms of clearness and priority.
Gameplay
As mentioned before, Broken Bots is a shooter with a top-down view of the arena and is perfectly playable with the traditional keyboard and mouse set-up but the controls feel much smoother with a controller. The online multiplayer mode offers four types of game modes, including three standard modes; Team Deathmatch (TDM), Capture The Flag (CTF) and King Of The Hill. The fourth mode, Crazy King, has the same concept as King Of The Hill except that the hill changes it positions every so-often. So far the patterns of the locations are easy to tell so hopefully this will change in the nearby future. The private game mode has two game modes; Survival and Private Match, both self-explained. As for the solo player campaign mode that was lacking in the early access version of the game, Broken Bots now has an offline game mode called Infiltration in which you need to infiltrate the enemy base and take down the boss. There are five levels to tackle and while the levels aren’t difficult, they aren’t as fast-paced and short as the multiplayer games.
Before starting a match in any game mode, the player is asked to choose their setup. There are six robots, ten sets of skills and another ten sets of passive abilities to choose from. The majority of these are unlocked as you level up your rank. Each robot is equipped with a weapon and instead of three, there are now five weapons available; assault, flamethrower, rocket launcher, grenade launcher and the plasma beam in Star Wars style. The skillsets and abilities can help you overpower your enemies while aiding you in your quest but you’ll need to learn which ones will fit your playstyle.
The concept of Broken Bots is simple and in par with Robot Wars. The player controls a robot that is equipped with weapons and skills, and needs to take their enemy down while defending their position. However the core feature is something entirely different. If chosen, the player has a malfunction ability that causes you or your enemies to malfunction negatively or positively, meaning it’s a roll of the dice. Positive effects can reward the player by granting increased speed or a killer-like spread-fire mode. The negative effects however can be a tad difficult to understand as they reverse your controls and aim while creating a drunken-like vision that makes it even harder to play with. It’s definitely a fun core mechanic that brings something extra to the table of robot arena wars.
Multiplayer games are often a hit or a miss due to the AI bots the developers offer. There are a plethora of games in which the AI bots are incredibly stupid and offer no challenge whatsoever. This is not the case in Broken Bots and we often felt that the AI bots learned from us – which is most likely not the case but still. Since Broken Bots is still fairly unknown in the gaming world, these type of bots make up for the lack of an active community.
Conclusion
Although there are no insane changes made to the game since the early access version, the full release of Broken Bots did bring more customization and game modes to the party. Although the game is still quite unknown which causes certain dips in multiplayer games, it is fully enjoyable and can be challenging. The core mechanic of malfunctioning is superb and well executed, making it an intriguing mechanic for plenty of other video games in the same genre. We mentioned in the previous that Broken Bots is a great game and although the game can still grow in every direction, we stick by this opinion.
Broken Bots - Review,
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