Droid Assault Review
Puppy Games have made a staple for making, as they call them, ‘neo-retro arcade games’. Droid Assault is no exception and is inspired by the Commodore 64 game Paradroid. Although Droid Assault was originally released in 2008, came to Steam in 2013 and now has a phsyical release though Puppy Games’ KickStarter campaign (which has been funded).
Droid Assault is a classic top-down shooter with over 50 levels and has a very simple concept — neutralise all droids — whatever it takes, by either destroying them or assimilating them into your army.
After every five levels a save point is unlocked allowing the inevitable restart slightly easier and you’ll start with whatever droids you had at the time. Although I beat most levels, I couldn’t quite complete the last few.
You start the game off with just one droid and as you progress you build up more transfer points, which allow you to control up to eight droids (which you can hot-switch between). Each droid you encounter have different “security levels”. The higher the level droid the more hit-points and better weapons they have, but you’ll need more transfer points you need to hack them.
The variety in droids allows you to find one that fits your style, whether it is a close up flamethrower/shotgun, longer range blaster, or slow firing phaser bomb. Sometimes when shooting hit boxes aren’t where you’d expect. This becomes an issue if you’re using a single shot weapon that needs accuracy, or when taking pot-shots. The game does offer an aim-assist option, which helps this. Although load outs are fixed, you can upgrade the droids various subsystems with upgrade drops.
Sometimes the drops can be unclear. Yes, they all have unique icons — which help — but when there’s a lot of action happening it’s not always clear at a glance if your droid needs that upgrade. Each droid can upgrade their five sub-types (battery size, armour, overdrive, recharge rate and damage) five times. They’d be easier to differentiate if the upgrades were colour coded like they are at the bottom of the screen.
Generally this isn’t an issue, there are two drops that are coloured red, super-repair and ‘rampage’, which allows to you rain a fluffy of bullets for a few seconds. It’s super fun, especially if you have the bouncy bullet upgrade.
While this upgrade system gives a sense of progression, it almost tunnels you to keep control of one droid, especially when fully upgraded. Sometimes the droid AI works well and your other droids help you out. However, a lot of the time. They don’t. At times they hide in corners of the map, away from harm, or stand in the open and get destroyed. I found this to be increasing more frustrating in the later levels, most ended with just one surviving droid.
I wished that if I found an upgrade my droid didn’t need it would transfer to another that did. This may solve the maternal feelings towards that one maxed out droid, especially if you’re worried the AI might get it killed if you switch to another a nano-second and that AI droids don’t collect upgrates themselves.
Danger mounts when you realise friendly fire is on. There are a number of occasions when a lot of bullets are flying about and it’s not always instantly clear which are your droids and which aren’t. Yours are light blue, but in a moment of panic — everything’s a target. It just means you need to be careful…which I’m not.
Droid Assault controls well, for the most part. You can use a keyboard and mouse, or use a controller. There aren’t rebindable keys though. This could cause issues when using a controller — an aspect I had a major issue with. Movement is on right analogue stick and aiming the left, which is the opposite for every twin-stick shooter I’ve ever played; personally, unlike the Borg, I. Couldn’t. Adapt. While this may not cause many problems playing in single player, it could in the local co-op mode which uses a controller for one player (for the review I did not try co-op).
Yes, Droid Assault has its flaws, but it’s a nice throwback to old school top-down shooters and has that ‘one more try’ feel. This said, once complete, I don’t feel there’s much replay value in the game.
Droid Assault is currently available on Steam, a physical release is also available on KickStarter until 30th May 2019.
Format: Windows (reviewed), Mac, Lynux
Publisher: Puppy Games
Developer: Puppy Games
ETA: Out now
Players: 1–2
Key provided as part of #IndieSelect
