Imagine a near future where we discovered an advanced form of artificial intelligence. We created robots that outsmart the human race easily. It’s the premise of Robothorium, a game currently on Steam Early Access and coming to Nintendo Switch next year. At first sight, the story doesn’t offer anything new, robots are a hot topic and a lot of different games are implementing the smart AI story in their games. What makes Robothorium unique is that you fight on the side of the robots, instead of the humans.
Enter the dungeon
Robothorium plays as a procedurally-generated dungeon crawler, meaning you’ll go from room to room to clear the objective. In order to see what room is most interesting, you’ll have access to a mini-map on your Nintendo Switch screen. During my first minutes in the game, I had some problems selecting the mini-map or objects I needed to continue my quest. Robothorium on Switch is a direct port of the PC version but sadly, this means the menus are extremely small, selecting what you need is hard. While playing, the developer did point out this is something he’s aware of and it will get a fix before the game fully releases somewhere next year. Of course, it’s nothing game breaking but I’ll be happy to play the game with some bigger text boxes. Entering the dungeon left me with a bad taste during my first seconds. I was assuming this was just an easy port but the more I played, the more I got into it.
Once I adapted to the small text boxes, I went on an adventure going from room to room. Since this is procedurally-generated, you never know what to expect but you can do some useful things to prepare for the inevitable combat. If you find the right room, you can hack the security system so you see where the enemies or hiding, or you can hack the air vents to poison the enemies before you meet them in combat. It’s clear that the game rewards gamers who search every room with big advantages in combat or new loot. Robothorium is literally filled with loot so I’m pretty sure you’ll spend a lot of time in the menus, figuring out what gear is the best fit for the job. Preparing for a battle is crucial since the enemies are always stronger than you are, without some clever actions, you won’t stand a chance.
Think before you act
The combat is definitely what I liked most while testing out the early Nintendo Switch. In the demo, I got access to a variety of robots. Of course, you have the typical classes like healers and tanks but things work a little differently here. My healer, for example, could also put on a mask to transform in a combat class. It’s interesting to see how all robots have their own personalities, resulting in unique and varied attack and defense options. Figuring out what your robot can do is crucial to win the fight. As said before, winning won’t come easy so you’ll really have to use your robots in the best way possible. Working together, boosting your own stats, is really important. It’s clear that the combat goes a lot deeper than what I’ve seen while playing but I must say, I’m really happy to see a deeper RPG combat game releasing on Nintendo Switch.
Early conclusion:
It’s clear that the team still has some work to deliver a Nintendo Switch version worthy of your money. That being said, the story and combat are already on point and I really enjoyed playing this early version. If the developers can fix the small text boxes on the Switch’s touchscreen, the overall experience will be a lot better for sure. I’m giving this one the benefit of the doubt since it really has the potential to be a really good fit on Nintendo Switch.
