Roboquest, a 3D roguelite FPS developed by RyseUp Studios, is in early access and is available to purchase on its Steam page for rounded up price of $20.
You wake up to the face of a human girl with no memories of anything. You find out it is the year 2700 and humans are now living scattered across the desert. You are known as a guardian robot, on a mission to save humanity. The girl, named Max, asks you for your help in investigating what the evil droids are protecting out in the middle of nowhere.
Roboquest is extremely precise and you will find that shooting enemies is essential but so is avoiding incoming fire by constantly moving. Dodging is very important because health is very scarce. There is the occasional drop from killing enemies but it seems to be random and is very rare. The only other way to get health is through a robot that regains 50% of your health but its also quite rare to see them.
Every time you kill an enemy, blue orbs drop from them and the more you collect of them, the more XP you get. Every time you level up, you get to choose an upgrade you will keep for the rest of the run.
A nice feature about this game that sets it apart from similar games of this genre is the weapon stat system. Instead of your weapons dealing a set amount of damage when you find it, you can find power cores that increase the damage of all weapons with the same type as the core. You can equip 3 of these cores and each one comes with two stats from a mix of two of these: demolition, assault, precision and technology. For instance, let’s say you found a precision-demolition core, then all the weapons that use either of these two get a boost in damage. You will find out that most of your games will be different playthroughs, with different cores and therefore, a different set of weapons you will use to get the biggest bonus. There are over 40 types of weapons that include, but are not limited to, a double barrel shotgun, a a bunch of semi-auto and bolt action rifles, a grenade launcher, a gun that freezes your enemies, a bow, and a sentry bot.
If you die, you start from the beginning of the level but you retain everything you have gotten thus far, in true roguelite fashion. In addition, there are several upgrades you can make to your basecamp, where you arrive to between playthroughs. These upgrades make your game a little easier and give you a random power core or weapon every run. You can also craft items if you find their blueprints in the game which includes items such as a jet pack, an extra life and a backpack to help make the run a little easier.
There are 2 bosses for you to test your reflexes against, but that will probably change by the time the game releases. The first boss, Diggy mole, can dig underground and drill towards you so you better be careful and be quick to dodge. Beating him will unlock a new class and upgrading your base camp will unlock another. These classes allow you to change your melee attack and special ability.
So in total, there are currently 3 classes you can play. The guardian, the one you start out with, and then there’s recon and engineer, which you can unlock. The guardian punches enemies to death and can fire a homing rocket, the recon class uses a dagger and allows you to mark your targets and make them vulnerable to all sources of incoming damage while the engineer uses a taser and lets you spawn two drones to help destroy your enemies.
At first glance, some textures appear weird but the gameplay is so fun you don’t even notice. Almost reminds me of borderlands. The music is very upbeat and does an amazing job at hyping you up. The controls are very precise and you’ll be very satisfied with dodging incoming fire and jumping around shooting. The game is very short but it is expected that they will expand on the game in future updates. Think of this game as an investment that you will be playing a lot in the future, and you will be playing a lot.
If you would like to keep up to date with the game’s development, then make sure to check out and follow the game’s Twitter account.
