{Review} Battlerocktopia

"Battlerocktopia" by Troy Sanders


Story
You are, I assume, familiar with the legend of Sisyphus? Yeah, the guy who has to roll the boulder up the mountain for all eternity, only for it to roll down again just before the summit, good on you for knowing that.
Now imagine the boulder is a killer robot with flame throwers and rocket launchers and instead of rolling it up the mountain, you have to punch it in the face with a fiery fist.
That's basically all the story I get from "Battlerocktopia", other than what is on the contest page. And even there it only says that the hero "finds himself battling against a nega-bot", as heroes are wont to do. Turn the wrong corner one afternoon and you stumble into a fight with a dastardly contraption made of circuits and hatred, we've all been there.

Mechanics
You move around and have three options aside from that: jump, hit the robot or dash a short distance and hit the robot, should it be in your way.
Your own skillset does not change during the game, but that may be due to the fact that you may be the hero of the game, but you are not the star. That is definitely the robot.
Looking like a tuner's dream of the companion cube at first, you are bound to take it seriously when out of nowhere it flies in a laser cannon and tries to cook itself a nice player flambé for lunch.
You start jumping around, running and hitting it, but if you are not quick, the bot gets bored with only killing you one way and grows a flame thrower. Or a rocket launcher. Or.. Well, you get the picture.
Your hits hurt the weapons and then the cube, so it is important that you find the right balance between righteously hitting it and bravely running away. If you are feeling cheeky, you can even lure it onto the points where its shots are going to land and have it friendly fire itself.
My attempts to kill it were - of course - unsuccessful and by now that thing has probably sprouted a death star laser. But the growth mechanic is something I really enjoyed, because...

Presentation
That thing looks badass. Intimidating as hell. The artstyle on the robot is crisp and you can easily identify the components but they still form a visually coherent whole. You can still see the almost cuddly unarmed cube underneath all the shiny implements of death trained on you and you long to strip it of its armaments to give it a sound beating.
I am less fond of the hero graphics, the background and the font, but as I said, they are not the stars here.

On the whole...
Want to punch a robot in the face? Play this. Want to dodge rockets? Play this. It probably won't keep you up at night, but it's a nice diversion with a memorable enemy.
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Link: http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/622#.VeRr-PntlBd

Dev: Troy Sanders

Time Played: 10 minutes

Got My Vote? Yes, because of its star - the cool enemy. All hail nega-bot.