Twin Robot’s is a fun, family-friendly, 2.5D platformer, developed by Thinice and ported to the PS4 by Ratalaika games. The game requires users to escort both robots to the exit door, each level opens with one of the two bots being trapped, requiring the other bot to free them somewhere along the mission by landing on a giant red button. This needs to be done within a time limit, as the trapped robot will be crushed unless they are freed within a certain time, creating a slight sense of frenzy, however this is largely killed as an aspect of the game, when you quickly discover that only one bot needs to reach the exit door to complete the level anyway.
However attempting to get both bots to the end does lead to some vaguely puzzling challenges, especially as you need to keep your bot ‘charged’ via blue pads on the floor to retain the ability to move, forcing some strategic approaches to be taken throughout.
Visually the game is appealing, it’s bright and colourful, arguably it has the look and feel of a stripped down Little Big Planet, and whilst this may seem like an insult, contextually this is an effective approach.
Whilst gameplay is enjoyable, there really isn’t anything too challenging, nor is there much in the vein of variation and this is where the problems lie. There’s a total of 28 levels, which I managed to play through in just shy of two hours, whilst I appreciate this is an indie title, that only costs penny change in gaming terms, after playing around 10 levels, you’ve pretty much experienced everything the game has to offer. Traps and puzzles, such as lifts and spikes become quickly repetitive, environments never really change and generally speaking the game becomes a tad dull, quickly. Twin Robot’s falls in to the trap of just upping the quantity of the very few obstacles it has in the later levels, rather than offering anything different to keep you invested.
Controls are simple, and this works allows the game to truly fall in to the pick-up-and-play category, you have movement, jump and charge and that’s it. Physics and jumping are well spaced, although I did encounter a few bugs with the game, random drops of frame rate, freezing and bots getting caught in rather odd positions, requiring a restart of the level.
Problems aside, I still believe this is a fun game for families, it’s nature of levels being relatively short, and the difficulty of it’s puzzles, mean it’s ideal for parents looking for a game to play with the kids. You also have a co-op mode, that allows two players to work through levels together, which adds some extra replay ability and hypothetically you can also race each other to the end in this mode.
Whilst it has its problems, Twin Robot’s is still a budget, family-friendly platformer, that has it’s moments.
REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PS4 code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.
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