Brogguts Review

Brogguts has all the skeletal makings of a great real-time strategy, but needs to fix some controls and add some features before it’s truly great.

The basis of the game is that space trash, or “brogguts,” can be converted into energy. The player controls mining ships and attack ships for various missions defending or attacking in order to get more brogguts. Earning new units and building in the campaign unlocks them in the “Base Camp” mode, which is basically an ongoing sandbox mode. Also, 50% of leftover resources (brogguts) are added to the resources in the “Base Camp” mode.

I was unable to sell structures. Most RTS games allow structures to be sold in case mistakes are made or for strategy. If that feature exists in this game, I couldn’t find it. A two finger drag creates a box around units to move them at the same time. But the gesture didn’t work perfectly. Approximately 20% of the time the two finger drag would do nothing and I would have to perform the gesture again in order to get the box around my units. 20% failure of any task in an RTS is a huge deal. Speed is incredibly important in an RTS.

While speed is important in RTS games, that’s normally because the best ones are played online against other players. Unfortunately, Brogguts has no multiplayer. Multiplayer is one of the main reasons I play RTS games. For Brogguts to be a complete game, it needs to have an update adding multiplayer support. Even multiplayer via WiFi or Bluetooth would be better than nothing. But online multiplayer would be best.

The tutorial leads straight into the “Base Camp” mode. I had no idea I was in that mode. I thought I was starting the campaign. I only had one type of ship and structure for the 20 minutes I played the sandbox mode. I finally realized that it wasn’t the campaign and exited. This can be fixed by either telling the user they’re in “Base Camp” mode or to go straight from tutorial to campaign.

I find myself wanting to zoom in and out by using the pinch gesture and moving my view about the map by just swiping the screen. Neither of these gestures are possible, but they’ve become almost standard in other RTS games. There is no zoom in or out capability in the game. There’s the gameplay screen and the fully zoomed out map screen (navigated to by a three finger swipe). The gameplay screen can only be moved by going to the zoomed out map and moving it. It’s an unnatural task and should be changed.

In the state Brogguts is currently in, I believe it’s worth from free to $0.99. When the control issues are fixed and possibly multiplayer added, it will be worth its $2.99 price tag or even more.

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