Robodunk Review: Build Bot, Will Travel

Robodunk satisfies a primal human need: admiring cool miniatures. Shiny plastic robots have been one of my weaknesses since I was ten years old, along with neo-grotesque font families, hot sauce, and men. While I’m normally wary of sports games as a whole, Robodunk’s tilt-shifted art style and bombastic powerups ultimately won me over. The basketball roguelike gameplay could use fine-tuning to avoid grinding gears, but what’s here is a solid foundation for frantic multiplayer fun.

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Showing Some Polish

From moment one of campaign mode, Robodunk’s charm shines through. Low-poly textures are scuffed just so, corners are rounded, and the omniscient Overseer narrator can’t resist a few quips. Shortly after, you use your starting funds to buy your initial tag team at the factory, selecting two starter robots with different strengths and stats.

The base archetypes are familiar–move faster, punch harder–but the advanced types, unlockable through match progression, add buffs like saw blades, lasers, and force fields. You still need money to buy unlocked robots and the chance to obtain skill tree upgrades. Winning matches, and your performance during those matches, is the easiest way to get cash and perks.

Selecting an arena for a campaign match lets you preview the difficulty, time duration, any special rules, and the perks your team is rewarded with if you win. Scoring is based on the severity of your dunk, determined by a special meter. A standard basket is 1 point and the devastating hyperspace dunk is 4 points. The meter takes time to charge, adding risk and reward to your shots. Every match and mode can be played in local or online co-op, but the developers include a guide to using Parsec for minimum online latency.

Robodunk’s control scheme is refreshingly simple. The bottom button (A on Xbox, X on PlayStation) jumps or dunks if you’re already in the air. The right button (B on Xbox, O on PlayStation) switches the robot you’re controlling or passes the ball to your teammate. Finally, the left button (X on Xbox, Square on PlayStation) activates your jamming ability, temporarily stunning enemies and giving you a brief upper-hand. Right trigger activates your robot’s built in weapon, each with a limited amount of ammo.

Even when I felt a bit frustrated with the game, the delightful art, music, and text helped me push through. Unlockable lore is doled out in tantalizing little chunks, each robot faction getting a detailed backstory and a picture of the original model. Robodunk credits the original designers and model builders, too! Blacked out unlockable sections–one ominously titled The Truth–hint at something more nefarious afoot in Robodunk’s world.

Feeling a Bit Rusty

Despite some fun tweaks to the side-scrolling basketball formula, Robodunk can’t avoid some common genre pitfalls. Viewing the court from the side means that the camera has to follow the ball, which sometimes leads to teammates being completely offscreen. Despite detailed environmental shadows and light trails on the ball, it can still be hard to gauge your field positioning, which can lead to some absolute misfires.

The default control scheme didn’t really work as intended until I tweaked the character switching settings. By default, it’s set to Auto. If you’re playing by yourself and your teammate gets closer to the ball, Robodunk will swap characters automatically. In practice mode, this led to me flubbing passes and running around in circles until I dialed things back to Semi-Auto. If you’re a more aggressive player or have a friend on hand, it won’t be an issue, but if you’re more support-oriented, expect some misplays at first.

Not all of the tweaks to the traditional NBA Jam formula land gracefully. Force fields around the scoring goal help mitigate court camping, but that still doesn’t prevent robot slap fights right outside its perimeter. Once stage hazards are introduced to matches, it’s harder to follow the action. A failed dunk sends you face-first into the robo-pavement, but an opponent or an expertly timed missile can also swat you out of the air. Without more detailed feedback, it was difficult to tell exactly where I misplayed in matches.

Pairing feedback ambiguities with campaign mode’s punishing game overs meant a fun romp could turn into an exercise in frustration at any moment. Defeat in a match wipes out all of your accumulated power-ups, forcing you to start your team over from scratch.

Since Robodunk’s robot types and perk acquisition are all money-based, you still retain your skill tree unlocks, but having to repurchase teammates and upgrades still stings. Campaign mode could be better served with tweaks to the in-game economy or a more traditional level-up system to retain more progress on a failed run.

The Verdict: Putting the Fun in Functional

Robodunk is a scrappy, lively take on side-scrolling basketball hijinks, but refinements to control defaults and campaign unlocks could send it soaring to even greater heights. For now it plays best with friends, but nothing a few post-launch tweaks couldn’t fix.

Good

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