Robolt is a frantic side-scrolling run-and-gun shooter in the all too common pixel-art style. My first impressions weren’t exactly great as the first (and the second) time I started Level 1-1, I died before I had even located my character on the screen. When I received my first trophy, I pressed the controller button to see what it was for, returned to the game, only to find the game didn’t pause and I had already died again.
Most games start easy, or perhaps with a tutorial, but this started in an extremely frustrating fashion. I played the first level at least 20 times and repeatedly died due to slidey controls, insta-death and zero checkpoints. Back to the start, time after time. After progressing very slowly and carefully, and getting 80% of the way through, I died again on what I suspect was an impossibly high jump, switched off my PlayStation in disgust, and contemplated whether this would be must first one-star review.
Thirty minutes later, I tried again. Now this time, I noticed the green tokens I had collected so far could buy a total of nine things – 3 weapon upgrades, 3 jump upgrades, and 3 life upgrades – aha! At this point, I already had enough green things to buy two-thirds of the upgrades on offer, so I started the first level yet again.
This time I breezed through it, the double jump was allowing me to reach new platforms, I could now get hit by a random bullet without being sent back to the very start, and my laser was far more effective. Pretty soon I was at the end of the first world, level 1-4, and faced my first boss. The second world introduced missiles that rain down on you, so you have to keep moving, but my first thought was to go back to the menu to see what other upgrades I could afford. It turned out I could already purchase EVERYTHING ON OFFER. Given the frustration I had at the start, I wondered what the point was, now that I could already afford to upgrade everything so soon into the game.
As I finished the second world and was now halfway through the game – I was actually starting to enjoy it somewhat but had received all trophies that the game had to offer. Then it occurred to me that I could just run right, hold down fire, and use my quadruple jump to pretty much leap over everything without having to do much at all – probably not what the developer intended.
There’s a lot of frustration in this game despite only being 1-2 hours in length. To start with I found it very easy to lose your tiny character in the backgrounds, and you can only shoot left if you’re actively moving backwards – as soon as you stop moving, you shoot forwards – effectively you can’t turn around whilst remaining stationary as such. Another weirdness for a side-scroller is that you can only scroll right – there’s no going back, you can’t pause the game, and there’s some significant slowdown in multiple places.
You can also restart a level and immediately be hit – which is quite unfair, as is being hit by a horizontal laser beam in a boss battle, which juggles you into the air losing a life, and you fall into the laser again and again until you die. You don’t even get a couple of seconds of invulnerability here.
There is some longevity to three-star each of the 16 levels, should you feel the desire to go back, and there are special red gems to collect, but once was enough for me. Partly because the level layouts felt very similar, but also because it just wasn’t that much fun.
Robolt is available now for PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch, priced at £4.49 // $4.99 // €4.99.
