Retro Machina

Review

Orbit Studios presents Retro Machina, a fantastic new action, puzzle-platformer game set in a retro-futuristic universe; a future where humans aren’t around to oversee things anymore.

Plot: In a Retro Futuristic world absent of human oversight, the world is governed by the rules of number, a streamlined society of logical robots and machines.

The only remaining residents of the world are the robots and machines protected by a glass-domed city. Everything was functioning just fine until that one ill-fated day that one Robot’s work came to a halt.

Not knowing what had happened to him, he now has to run for his life before the city throws him away to maintain law and logical order. He ran and ran, but to no avail.

He was caught and thrown far away from the city, into nothing but destruction as far as the eye can see. The whole world is against him, and everything that moves will try to finish him off for good.

But this little tin-can is not going down without a fight and will try to restore himself to his former glory.

Gameplay: Retro Machine features an uber-simple yet clever gameplay. Playing as a generic assembly Robot kicked out of the workplace due to malfunction, you need to navigate throughout the ruins of the old human world and attempt to reach machines that can fix your issues.

The game features a simple yet at times oddly behaving control scheme; a basic WASD movement system which at times requires double keys to move in a current trajectory.

The same goes for the enemy unit’s system movement control, which is far more awkward to use and rather annoying when a mis-click leads to an important asset's death. More on this later.

As you progress through the ruins, you’ll notice there’s no simple way of getting around and you’ll have to disable something or switch something on to either unlock a different section of the area or unlock a totally new section. It works fine but takes a little while to figure out.

Combat: As a basic Assembly Robot, you’re only lightly armored and equipped with a basic work ranch. You’re super squishy, so basically your whole combat strategy is evade, dodge and attack.

Fights against one or two enemy bots are very manageable, but it gets tricky when the count goes up and when facing bosses. As you’re pretty much unarmored and with limited fighting capabilities, you’ll need to time your attacks right, choose and finish the weakest lines first, then go for a blow-and-evade technique attacks against the big boys.

The bosses and heavy hitters are mostly either slow or have limited endurance for an attack, which balances out the fights just right.

The combat system features a super awkward and outright uncomfortable control system with K for attacks and L for dodge, without any way for changing the controls. Don’t get me wrong, these are doable but pretty awkward to use for the most part.

Puzzles: The most interesting part of Retro Machina is its simple yet clever arrangement of puzzles spread throughout the game. The puzzles consist mostly of getting past certain defenses, unlocking gates, disabling gates, getting into a different section, etc.

As you progress you will get to control other robots by hacking them with a press of a button E to gain control of its movement controlled by the four arrow keys. 

You can take over different types of robot to get past various problems: tiny robots to get past tight corners and holes through the wall, hovering defense robots to get over electric defenses and disable the defense system by attacking, walling-climbing robots to get on top of things, etc, etc.

Upgrade system: Felt very much like an afterthought. The game could’ve either gone for something more involved or just outright removed this system. Although it does play an important role, it’s not worth focusing on.

Music and sound effects: The background music is pretty mild and unenjoyable at first, but it slowly grew on me and I started enjoying it by the end. Your taste may vary.

The sound effects were pretty much on point; they fit the game's whole theme, and gameplay just fine, adding a decent amount of flare to an otherwise mild and simplistic gameplay.

Review written by BiteMexD for Zeepond.com!

Retro Machina Steam Store page