Trouble With Robots Review

Trouble With Robots is a game that imagines the worlds of science fiction and fantasy squaring off in an all-out war. Players take control of fantasy characters like elves and centaurs to defend their world from invasive robots in this solidly built card-based strategy game.

At its core, Trouble With Robots is a streamlined real-time strategy game for mobile devices. Specifically, it's streamlined through the card system. Before each level, players can select cards to bring with them into battle that will then become available through a random draw between enemy waves. During waves players can deploy their drawn cards at will, but have to use an auto-regenerating resource illustrated by a magic wand that fills up with power.

If this seems complicated, it really isn't. Essentially, players need to make sure they choose a solid general strategy before going into battle, then deploy cards when they're tactically most valuable. Honestly, the early stages can largely boil down to staring at the few meters on the game screen and deploying a healing or new unit card when the numbers get a bit low. Over time the difficulty increases, but thanks to Trouble With Robots's card unlock system players will have more (and better) tools at their disposal to deal with the robot threat.

Trouble With Robots has a really great sense of humor, balance, and challenge, which makes the entire experience feel rewarding. The start of each level has some humorous flavor text, the ability to create a custom deck, and the option to select a difficulty level. If some battles feel like a cakewalk, then players can retry these levels at a harder setting. On the other hand, if things feel too hard they can unlock new cards to use and then retry those levels with a new arsenal.

As a free-to-play game, Trouble With Robots only has it's first chapter available for free, with two more available for purchase. This initial chapter shows more than enough of what the full game has to offer, so players can feel comfortable knowing what they're getting into if they decide to shell out.

The only real thing that hinders Trouble With Robots is its visuals. It's definitely not the most aesthetically pleasing game, and some of the avatars look pretty rough. Luckily it's really engaging and fun, so it's pretty easy to look past this fault. Also, since more intense battles require quite a bit of meter watching, players will be too busy micro-managing unit health to even notice.

It is definitely worth checking out Trouble With Robots. It's a fun, streamlined, strategy experience that has a neat deck-building mechanic that creates a bunch of ways to play. For those that don't like it, they don't really lose out since the first chapter is free, and there's more content waiting for those that want to really dive deep into it.