Martians Vs Robots Reviews

I'm a fan of lane defense games, so I've enjoyed my time with Martians Vs Robots. At the moment, it's a fun, albeit short, game (to be fair, every lane defense game feels short when compared to the original, Plants vs Zombies). The core lane defense gameplay of generating resources in order to create defenses in each lane is solid. There are a few issues that make it less than it could be; some of them may be attributed to its Early Access, pre-final status, some may be a little more concerning for fans of the sub-genre. I present these here, in order of least concerning to most: - at the beginning of the game, you can play with only three units per level...but you can only choose one. The other two are selected for you randomly. This is actually sort of a feature for me, as I enjoy the challenge of having to work with odd combinations of units. But it does make the game highly variable in difficulty right from the start. You can get combinations that are so difficult that it makes the level effectively impossible. - the color palette is very drab, as everything - Martians AND robots - is a uniform grey metal color. Not a big deal to me, but it might bother others. - levels are "graded" with stars upon completion, based on how many lanes were defended successfully. This makes Martians Vs Robots feel like a mobile game. I don't particularly like that feel; I much prefer the idea of getting a score in a lane defense game. - there is no information in the game about any of the units outside of the levels themselves. So when you are selecting the one unit you can choose for a level, you can't know what it does or how much of which resource(s) it takes to build one of them, unless you've used them before and remember those details. Even when playing the level, you only know how much the units cost; you don't know how tough they are, how much damage they do, what range their attacks have (or even if they are attacking units), how much energy they produce, etc. etc. You also have no information about the enemy units anywhere in the game. I found this exhausting after a while, not knowing whether units I haven't used before would even be relevant to the level I was about to attempt. This lack of information within the game is a big drawback, for me. - when you create a unit right in front of an enemy, the enemy ignores it and just walks through it (the only exception are what I call the proximity mines). A common tactic in lane defense games when you're desperately trying a last-ditch defense of a lane is to place a unit - any unit - in front of the attackers to delay them long enough to be able to place something more effective (and more expensive). This doesn't work in Martians Vs Robots - if you place something in the same coordinate as the attacker, or in the coordinate just to the left of the attacker, the attacker will walk right through it as if there was nothing there. This is particularly bad when the unit you're placing is a wall, whose only purpose is to block enemies, but in general, this is just broken. This game is in Early Access, and it's both playable and enjoyable. But at least those last two problems should be addressed before the game goes to final release.

Could be a good Lane Defense game trying to get out, but for my tastes, at this stage the game is not giving enough information to make it an satisfying experience. You have no apparent information on what the various towers do and, in the tower selection stage, you are unaware of the various tower prices. For the price, you can't complain too much, but in the early stages you are flying completely blind. Hopefully these issues will be rectified along the track and if there is a good game there I will happily amend the review to positive!