ROBOKILL!
That’s the sort of game that should have an exclamation mark. Robokill: Titan Prime to give it its full name. It’s a browser embedded (although does some Flash downloady gubbins) from Rock Solid Arcade. Top-down, mouse/keyboard arcade excellence.
It truly is excellent. There’s RPGish bits and bobs, with an inventory for weapon and shield drops, and a limited number of slots in which they can be placed on your mechanical friend. There’s a shop on each level at which the unwanted is sold, and the wanted is bought. And you level as you progress, improving your basic skills enough to keep up with the increase in enemy difficulty. But this is really all about frenzied gliding around the room, running rings around the influx of enemy robots, and doing your best to not fall off the edges.
It’s incredibly satisfying to get better at this, realising techniques for particular baddie bots, making intelligent use of cover (especially if you’ve got a laser equipped to shoot over it), and never, ever not moving. In fact, things can get to a Geometry Wars level of intense as you’re encircling a room, dodging not only dozens of enemies (running into them is the most lethal mistake other than falling off a ledge), but also the gazillions of bullets and energy blasts filling the screen.
The design is not perfect. The biggest mistake is the difficulty spiking. Each level consists of a collection of interconnected rooms, often with multiple routes to pick to reach goals. However, a room early in a level can be hair-pullingly hard, then followed by a series of areas you fly through without thinking. As much as I loathe all forms of boss fight, having things get more tricky as you near the level’s goal would make more sense. Also, many rooms can quickly feel repetitive, some using the very same layout as the previous.
What is pretty perfect however is the death debt. Each time your robot clogpops, you’re not only financially fined, but the opposing robots reclaim two of the rooms you’d previous cleared. These aren’t necessarily rooms you need to be cleared, or they might entirely hinder your progress. When things start going wrong, you can make some hefty backward progress, but in such a way that it feels deserved. And your robot’s ability to teleport into rooms equipped with a portal means you can often happily sacrifice the gaps. Often you’ll end up clearing unnecessary rooms just so they might get reclaimed, rather than more important ones once you reach a tricky section.
As should always be the case in this sort of game, the different enemy types start to take on a pseudo-personality in your head, such that some you come to feel fond of, and others you’d immediately punch in the face if you met them at a party. A space robot party.
The first third of the game is entirely free, and a good number of hours. The second two thirds will only cost you a measly $9.95 (about £5), and it’s well worth it. I’ve spent huge chunks of yesterday and today with this, and am currently struggling with the final level.
Thanks to Simon for yet another top tip.
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i encountered Robokill! a couple of weeks ago whilst idly stumbling through the internet. It ensnared me for a few minutes but I got bored with it pretty quickly.
They need to balance the hardness to the getting cool stuff ratio a little, more cool stuff sooner and getting harder slower would be good.
Other than that, its pretty polished for a web game. I especially likes that it autosaves your progress.
I enjoyed this a lot, until the grinding and insta-death rooms became too much.
I can’t understand why it’s Flash, though. It’s not really that convenient playing it in a browser (where it takes foreverrr to load each time), and the pyrotechnics are weedy.
Chugs on my rig – winXP,firefox3,PIV:3.4GHz,2Gig
Is it poor coding, flash9 or something up with my PC?
Good fun, but not really playable for me in busy rooms.
Buttery smooth here, you got anything else running in background, multiple FireFox tabs?
It works mostly very well on my machine. Only occasionally slows down in the busiest rooms.
In these games, slowdown is a blessing. :)
I like it alot, thanks Walker.
Works well for me. I played this heavily a few weeks ago and eventually wound up paying for the full version just to see what other weapons I could unlock and what other craziness would try to kill me.
This is excellent. I’ve already wasted several hours on this
It’s a very fine game, but is it weird that I recognize the theme tune from Space Empires…
Oh man, I’ve missed these types of games, really I have. This is great stuff, I may have to sink the 10 bucks into the second two-thirds.
I got slaughtered several times and enjoyed every second of it.
It was great fun until I started facing the blue bullet bots that kill you in 4 shots.
Same, I StumbledUpon this and enjoyed it a fair amount – kept me from revising anyway. I doubt I’d pay though as primarily at the moment I am on my laptop and flash on Linux does just not play nice (you can crash Firefox with four YouTube videos which is a bit pathetic. Dammit Adobe!). Good fun though, even when the slowdown really started to dig in. Though it was a bit… grindy. I went through every-flamin’-room to get enough money for the shiny bigger weapons. Though the fact that rare ones jump in and out of the shops randomly is annoying; I saved up for a brilliant one only to return and realise it had gone. Presumably the robots bought it to spite me.
Fun, but like others, I’m finding the cool stuff:hardness ratio way off. I’m still using one of the starting weapons, and I’m on the second map.
Edit: It must have heard me griping, it just gave me three shiny new weapons in a row, and now I’m all pimped out.
Great little game, although it has the flaw of being a browser game which means you’re playing it in a little window surrounded by blaring white, rather than it filling the screen and being satisfyingly atmospheric.
Like the game. Too hard at times, but much easier once I realised you could hold in the fire button. :D
Bit the bullet and bought it.
It took a while before I got the hand of ducking and weaving around those “kill you in three shots” baddies, but when I reached level 16 (I think that’s when you qualify for the laser) those got a bit easier.
Too bad lasers are crap as far as crowd control’s concerned. Everything has a downside.
Great little game at first, but it’s become frustrating at level 4. Every time I get to a room with a lot of robots, the controls seize up and I end up running over the edge.
I obviously played this way too much. I have beat this game over 10 times so far from start to finish. I am on my third entry for a robot name. My first robot has over $3.7 million dollars in cash and my second almost $2.5 million dollars both bots are at experience level 34 and that is were you max out. Anyway the trick to finishing level 10 (Deck10 – the command deck) is to switch to all heavy lasers not to disturb the bots that appear in the last room. If you do nothing they do not wake up so if you destroy them before they wake up then you are way ahead of the game. Love this game and I play it on an 7 year old pc that I loaded Ubuntu Linux on last year.
Hey, i know this might be very… inappropriate here, but i just wanna know if anyone is willing to send me the full version for free, i finished the free one quite afew times, and would really like to proceed on to the full version. if you do not wish to, simply do not respond. hey author, if this is inappropriate, remove it if you wish. i mean no offence or harm to anyone/thing.
I’m just finished the whole episode one again with my lvl 16 robot, clearing every single room, round 1 hours done it. I got imba weapons, 2 uncommon light lasers, freeze and +something fire rate for clearing out big guys, and 2 uncomon heavy shotguns, freeze and hit multiple enemies to clear out all those little bugs. upgrades, 2 +13 shield chargers, 1 +7 front shield thingy, and 1 +4 cash sensor lol.
“Sending” you the full version would involve them giving you their e-mail address and possibly password so, I won’t lie, I don’t see it happening. It’s only $10, I just finished the full thing and very much enjoyed it.
Lol. i bought it yesterday and finished it. spent bout 4 hours on the non-free levels. the second last room of the game is a toughy. but i think this game’s mission objectives rooms aren’t grand enough. they’re too easy. last room of last mission seemed hard but its pretty easy actualy. my inventory = complete ownage lol… i even hit 200k gold once, or twice, coz all of my items were bought from shop and were heavy lasers or pulsers and those stuff, all rare. pretty expensive there. end game money was about 140k lol
PLZ…
anybody can help me plz!?
i need the register but i can’t register because i live on Brasil!!!
plz HELP-ME!!!!
tks
amazing game loved it but i dont understand im lvl 16 and whenever i clear rooms now i dont get experience what do i do because i dont want to buy the full version so how can i gain experience.
You can’t. Cap for free game is 16. cap for payed is 34 or something, which is me. anyways, guys, is it possible to download the game INTO the computer? so that you don’t have to go internet to play it? i already bought it a week ago
You can download the .swf easily enough, if you look through the html source, but that alone doesn’t really help as it sends you to the website to play anyway.
Can anyone provide me the link to the free version of it, that is way after level 4??