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Just like its name sounds like a hodgepodge of gaming terms, Rocket Bot Royale is a similar mashup of genres and mechanics where players parachute tanks into an arena and fight to be the last one standing. The result is a frantic little multiplayer game that is fun to play with casually but would be more fun if it wasn't so aggressively monetized and its matches lasted a tad longer.

Worms-meets-PUBG

Rocket Bot Royale is a multiplayer battle royale game where every player controls a tank. At the start of each match, 25 live players parachute off of a helicopter onto a battlefield where they can then proceed to arc rocket shots to hit other players, kill bot tanks, and even blast their own tank to jump around to other parts of the map.

The goal of each match is simply to be the last tank alive. In addition to destroying other tanks to better your chances, you also have to constantly pay attention to the rising ooze that slowly overtakes the arena. Any tanks that aren't able to stay above this hazard get automatically eliminated.

Platform and pulverize

There's a lot to pay attention to in any given Rocket Bot Royale, but even some of the longest matches don't take more than a minute or two. In that time, you need to manage your positioning, destroy bots, look for crate drops, platform, and even destroy bits of the environment to give you better positioning against your enemies.

The tanks in Rocket Bot Royale aren't particularly sturdy, so you need to avoid enemy fire at all costs. Luckily, your tank is surprisingly good at rocket jumping and sticking to any surface, even when completely upside-down. These dynamics create potential for some really wild highlight moments of destroying tanks in mid-air or flipping out of the way of enemy salvos, but these feats will most likely happen by accident unless you invest a lot of time mastering the game.

Military industrial complex

There are a few minor quirks with Rocket Bot Royale, like its strange default controls that don't get completely fixed by turning on the slingshot aiming function, but all of these pale in comparison to the game's true problem: how it is monetized.

There are a lot of very familiar free-to-play mechanics present in Rocket Bot Royale, like a battle pass, premium skins, etc., but there are also systems in place that intentionally place players on unequal footing in matches. Prior to every round, players can spend coins on special weapons to bring with them, and your menu of choices increases the more you level up your account. If you don't engage with this system, you're almost always at a disadvantage when entering a match. The game drops crates that anyone can collect to gear up, but matches don't really last long enough for a looting phase to feel like something you can feasibly rely on.

The bottom line

There are a lot of ideas happening in Rocket Bot Royale, and most of them are pretty compelling and enjoyable. The only problem is many of these ideas are so thoroughly smothered by the game's monetization systems and blisteringly fast match length that none of them feel like they get room to breathe and realize their full potential.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/rocket-bot-royale-review/

Square Valley takes the idea of the city-builder and turns it into a unique puzzle game where the way players place specific features in relation to each other makes all the difference. It's a bit of an abstract exercise when comparing it to other city-builders, but your end results end up looking like well considered spaces the more you strive to score big points. It's an elegant merging of strict mechanics and player creativity that feels substantial and satisfying, despite a few missing convenience features.

Puzzle place

At its most reductive, Square Valley is essentially a worker placement game. You have a pool of items to place on a 9×9 grid, but you draw from that pool as if it is a deck of cards. These items are features you'd find in a rural village like houses, windmills, trees, farm animals, etc. Depending on how you place these items, you can score different amounts of points, and those point totals can change based on how these items are placed in relation to one another.

For example, you can score more points for houses if they are placed along a roadway, and windmills score big if you surround them with wheat fields. Every feature you have at your disposal has a clear explanation of its scoring rules and you can also tap on existing features in on your valley map so you can always double-check how new placements might affect them. Games of Square Valley end when you hit a turn limit, which varies based on the mode and/or level you are playing.

Valley variety

It doesn't take too many rounds of Square Valley's standard chapter-based mode for the variety of features to place on the map to explode. Different breeds of animals, variations on residences, and even blights like haunted buildings or predators make sure you're always encountering some new kind of challenge while trying to score big with the items at your disposal.

Luckily, Square Valley maintains a solid line of logic in how practically all of its features work so building with them or around them starts to feel somewhat intuitive, even when working with them for the first time. Through the lengthy primary mode, nearly 50 levels are divided into three chapters that differentiate themselves by land type (valleys, plateaus, islands), all of which require some alternate strategies and creative thinking to score well enough to move on to the next challenge.

Hamlet hardships

The balance of all of Square Valley's various pieces is remarkable in how it both manages to consistently provide satisfying challenge while also–when played well–produce village landscapes with walled-in city centers, witch huts buried in the woods, and farmland that sprawls out by livestock pens. Even if you don't want to ride the slow ramp of unlocked features, Square Valley lets you roll right into a Sandbox Mode where you can mix and match all of the rules and items to set your own challenge or compete in a daily challenge to compare your score against other players using the same map and elements provided to you.

As great as all of this is, there are a few annoying aspects of Square Valley's design. The most glaring of these issues is that the game doesn't suspend or save your sessions, forcing you to either sit and play through a full puzzle map or risk having to restart it from the beginning when you come back to the game. There's also a few building features like walls and rivers that aren't entirely clear about how the rules of how “painting” them onto the map work, and can lead to situations where a ton of your planned out moves can go to waste because a wall can't run alongside a plateau, for example.

The bottom line

By and large, Square Valley is a highly compelling puzzle game that captures the spirit of city-building in a pretty flexible and fun package. I just wish I could pop in and out of it a little more easily. Despite this (and a small handful of rulesets that could be a smidge clearer), Square Valley is well worth checking out.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/square-valley-review/