Robocraft: All the fun of fighting robots with none of the shrapnel

Jake Dobbs

Driving, shooting, building, three tried and true game mechanics now brought together.

“Robocraft” is a Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) vehicle shooter in which you build a robot from basic building blocks and components, which include items like wheels, guns, radar. Once satisfied, you go off into your first battle and will likely be destroyed. With every death you learn something new about the games major mechanics, become more seasoned.

Best of all, it’s free on the game’s site or on Steam.

Currently there are over 100 cubes and components to choose from, with the developer regularly updating the game adding new items.

With the current cubes available there are three main vehicle types: cars, planes and hovercrafts.

Cars and planes perform as their real world counterparts. Hovercrafts can hover a short distance above the ground and have the ability to adjust said height.

The possibilities in Robocraft are virtually endless. With enough RP and some creativity, the robot of your dreams can come to life on your screen. Photo courtesy Creative Commons.
The possibilities in Robocraft are virtually endless. With enough RP and some creativity, the robot of your dreams can come to life on your screen. Photo courtesy Creative Commons.

Similarly there are three weapon types: subatomic machine guns (SMGs), plasma launchers, and rail cannons.

SMGs have are the base weapon of the game, essentially like a assault rifle. They have a rather large effective range if used correctly and have no reload.

Plasma launchers are the artillery of the game, being able to fire fast traveling, high damage projectiles in an arcing trajectory. All plasmas equipped will fire at the same time, but must be reloaded. The more equipped, the longer the reload.

Rail cannons are the sniper of the game, firing extremely long range, one-shot potential projectiles. Downsides include a rather long reload time and a very distinct projectile trail, making you very easy to spot.

To help make the battles more balanced there are ten tiers of robot, determined by the cubes and components a bot is made of. This is to make the games more balanced by preventing one overly powerful craft to completely wipe a team of low level players.

When you start the game you only have a small amount of basic cubes and parts to choose from. As you win some battles you earn Tech Points (TP), these are used to unlock newer and more powerful cubes and components.

Just as robots are tiered, TP is tiered as well. The higher the tier of an item, the higher tier of TP is requires.

Now this game being free-to-play, there are microtransactions built in. That means that you can pay real money for items in the game. However, the system is well built and very fair.

The game has two currencies, Robo Points and Galaxy Cash.

Robo Points (RP) are earned through playing the game doing an array of tasks like damaging enemies. Galaxy Cash (GC) is bought with real money.

All the items in the game, except purely cosmetic items, are purchasable with both currencies. RP prices are much higher than GC prices, but that is due to it being rather easy to get large amounts of RP in a short time period.

Overall, “Robocraft” is a unique MMO experience with a ton of replayability, a growing community and a hard working developing team releasing new, free content. It’s only getting bigger with new mechanics, components and balancing updates.

Whether you want to build the ultimate fighting machine or just something that looks nice, Robocraft encourages it all. Since it’s free, that means there is no risk in trying it out.