Robosquare (PC) Review

 

Robosquare is a competitive Racing Game with Robo-Cars, that features a couple of different gamemodes. The game released with the Sumo, Boss and Race modes and later added a Ghost Mode via content updates.

Sumo Mode is probably the main game mode and essentially a car based Battle Royale match. Players have to ram each other of a platform and some maps even feature multiple levels per match or a moving platform. Even though it sounds similar to Hexagon Knockout, I certainly enjoyed the Sumo Mode of Robosquare more. In the Races players have to navigate obstacle courses to reach the finish line as the first. The difficulty of controlling your car makes this mode interesting, but more to that later on. The Boss Mode lets all players fight against a large Boss Car. The players have to try to push the Boss out of the map within 3 minutes to win. I enjoyed this mode less than the other two, since every match pretty much plays the same and the human players have to do a really bad job to not win the match, since they can infinitely respawn here. Only the new Ghost Mode is even worse. In this mode the player has to survive for 3 minutes, while a dozen of Bot Ghost Cars try to crash him out of the contest. The best strategy here is to simply dodge all contact for 3 minutes, which becomes really dull and not much fun after all.

What makes Robosquare unique and enjoyable is the fact, that the cars spin out of control so quickly, that it becomes a real craft to control the vehicle. Even the slightest turns let the heck of the car break out of control and will make your car spin. This feels really horrible, but is a conscious decision by the Devs. Every wrong move can be your last and the conditions are equal for everybody. As a small compensation every car possesses a built-in crane, which allows the cars to pull back up, when they lie on their back after a crash. This mix of uncontrollable movement and jump/cranes leads to fun and chaotic matches with cars (at least in the first two modes).

Bots are being used to fill up lobbies, which is a good thing. It is just a bit unfortunate, that players can not choose, whether they want to wait for real players, or get into Lobbies with Bots. As soon as you queue, it only takes around 5 seconds to get into a match. This is a little bit too fast to find enough other players. The Bots at least do a pretty decent job.

Players can complete challenges to earn ingame currency, with which they can purchase cosmetics items for the car (comparable to Rocket League). They can buy duplicate items to combine them and create new colour styles. This is supposed to be a great incentive to keep playing and unlocking new stuff. There are also leaderboards in the most important categories and so on, to keep the most passionate players motivated.

Visuals are not terrible, but extremely simple. There are too many grey areas in this game and most maps look quite dull. Funnily enough the backgrounds of the levels are in fact way more detailed than the actual tracks. The Soundtrack in this game I actually liked much more than the Visuals. Soundeffects themselves are nothing worth writing home about, but they are rather subtle and less frequent than in other games anyway. Instead, Robosquare is having constant background music during gameplay and in the menus, which is actually pretty good.

 

Pro:

- The gameplay is enjoyable Chaos

- Sumo (BR) and Races are pretty fun

- Decent Bot Support

- Good Soundtrack

 

Contra:

- Movement can get frustrating

- Visuals are not impressive

- Boss and Ghost Levels are rather lame

 

Result:

Robosquare is a chaotic mess of crashing and spinning cars, and in its best moments quite enjoyable. The game however seems to lack substance. It is great to play for maybe an hour, but after that you have probably seen everything it has to offer and get slightly frustrated by the controls.  

 

5.5/10