What could be more awesome than fighting off alien invaders with your puny ship? Or fighting off robots with your one robot? You know the movie we’ve all been waiting for Star Wars: Salvation, where we finally get to see the Droid Wars. If that movie was going to be made, and it had a movie tie-in game then Droid Assault would be it! Wait a sec, cooler than fighting robots off with your one robot, isn’t that what this is? Well no, the only thing that could be cooler than that would be fighting off waves or robots with your own robot army! That’s right, instead of Robotron-style arena-based droid combat against impossible odds, you get Robotron-style arena-based multi-droid combat against incredible odds! That’s just what this is too! Unfortunately we don’t get to see C3P0 take on a Cyberdyne Systems model 101, but we can at least pretend.
Looks like Puppy Games have done it again, only instead of robots… we get… uhh robots. Okay Droid Assault is a bit different than Ultratron. See Ultratron has a full open arena with swarms of droids coming at you. This is different in that the levels, while not only are they scrolling, but they’re a bit more natural and maze like. You have to go through corridors and around corners and stuff. Next difference is the droids don’t all swarm toward you. They seem to patrol hallways and stuff. They will chase you however, so beware. The controls are pretty easy, very fps-like, WASD keys to move and left mouse button to fire. The thing that makes this unique is you can also take over other droids and build up your droid army to fight for you. This is easier than it sounds in actual practice. Right click an enemy to see if you can control them. If you have enough transfer points you can easily overcome them. Soon you have tons of little robotic minions roaming about shooting bad guys.
There are several different types of droids. Of course, as usual, there’s nothing to tell you what they all are, except after you’ve captured a different kind. There was a basic one which shot single shots. One that shot dual shots, and one that did some rapid fire. My only real complaint is the lack of more documentation. Sure it has enough to show you how to play, but it never tells you all the little goodies, like power-ups and so forth. There are some I know of from the demo, like extra score, shields, “rampage” mode (gives you intense rapid fire), regular rapid fire. In any case it’s fun to find out for yourself.
Graphics are similar to Ultratron and Titan Attacks. In fact not much has changed except these are different characters, and the screen scrolls. Puppy Games have seemed to created a niche for themselves. I hope they don’t change too much, because it’s a cool style. It’s retro without being dated. In other words only these graphics could have come from these times, they couldn’t really be done back in the 80’s. But there’s enough of a style that makes you think about these old games. The sound is appropriate. I usually don’t say much about sound, because if it stands out too much then the sound probably isn’t that good. The one significant thing about the sound here, is when your droid is in danger a sort of klaxon goes off, an alarm sound basically. So unless you get some sort of repair power-up you’re in danger. Welp, I guess that about covers it.
Final Analysis: Puppy Games best game yet. Yummy, crunchy, retro-goodness. Addictive with the right hint of complexity. This is definitely one you should buy. Comes in Windows PC, Mac OSX, and Linux flavors.
Name: Droid Assault
Developer: Puppy Games
Price: $19.95 / €14.74 / £13.00
Where you can get it:
| Download the Windows PC Demo | Download the Mac OSX Demo | Download the Linux Demo |
| Buy the full Windows PC version | Buy the full Mac OSX version | Buy the full Linux version |
Tags: addicting, fun, game, games, independent, Indie, linux, mac, Puppy Games, retro, retro styled, review, reviews, scroller, scrolling, Shooter, windows