The Good Robot is a shoot - em up style game that brings back memories of arcade games from the '80s. We were able to get our hands on an Alpha version of the game to try out before its scheduled April 2016 release date.
In the game you're a robot, a good robot, that flies around shooting up different enemies while raking up points and money to purchase upgrades and hats! The Good Robot has numerous different enemy robots that are trying to kill you. The controls of the good robot allow you the freedom to fly around in total 360 degrees of freedom while exploring different cave looking levels. The action is fast paced and you need quick manoeuvring and thinking to get past all of the enemies that appear on the screen at once.
Your robot also has a limited vision radius, this means that you wont be able to see all the enemies around the corners. You will have to point your gun in that direction to see whats actually there. This adds a great element to the game which makes the difficulty that much harder. Also from my play-through experience, I noticed that if you died before finishing a level you would lose all your progress and upgrades that you purchased and must start again from the beginning of the level.
I wasn't able to find any sort of checkpoint, I'm not sure if this was a feature that the developer left out on purpose or simply not activated yet in the Alpha build. As you kill enemies they also drop different weapon upgrades that dramatically change your weapon, whether its a rail gun, pulse rifle or wave gun. I'm sure I haven't seen all the possible combinations yet. During your adventure you will have boss battles to go on to the next level, these robots are a lot stronger and harder to defeat than everything else you have encountered in the specific level. You will also have the chance to purchase numerous upgrades at kiosk stations. These upgrades let you customise your robot in many different ways. The upgrades consist of attack power, movement speed, vision radius, rate of fire, shields and the last upgrade changes periodically.
Another fun thing that you can purchase in The Good Robot are invincibility hats! These hats allow you to not take any damage while you are wearing them. Once you get hit a few times they fall off and you begin to be able to take damage once again! The hats continuously change every time you visit the Hat store and are very fun to use as they provide you with another way to customise your robot during your adventure.
To be honest when I first started playing The Good Robot, I wasn't a fan of the game, but the more I played it the more i began to enjoy it! With an April 2016 release date the developers can add many things before release and make this solid game even better, and with a rumored retail price of $10 this seems like a solid pick up for anybody who enjoys shoot-em up games!
