Rocket Bot Royale Review

A solid 2D battle royale that works great on mobile

We are a little late to the party on this one but Rocket Bot Royale is a newish – released in April 2022 – game from WinterPixel Games. WinterPixel is a small studio of three veteran developers that was founded in 2020 in Canada and Rocket Bot Royale (RBR) is their first game. Available on Steam, iOS, Android and in browser RBR is a solid first showing with great technical chops.

Overview

The idea is simple. You are a tank on a map that is sinking into the sea (or sludge or slime or other nastiness depending on the level) and in typical battle royale fashion you need to be the last of the 35 tanks to survive. Quick Tip: The sea is always rising so get to the top as quickly as you can. Pretty much every winner is the person who has the highest position at the end. The game is entirely 2D and the controls are just left and right movement and a button click (or a drag on mobile) to shoot. If you shoot the ground below you the tank blasts into the air which is effectively your jump. You can also do this while in the air as well which gives you a way to double or triple jump depending on the situation.

All parts of the map are destructible so if you see someone around a corner you can take to blasting away at their position and hopefully knock them into the sea or blow up their tank. However, your rockets don’t reload all that fast so if you run out you can definitely find yourself on the receiving end of a volley without a way to get out of there or out over the sea with no way to blast back to safety and many matches have ended this way for me after being overly aggressive at the beginning :-(.

Gameplay

Despite its simple idea Rocket Bot Royale offers some solid gameplay variability. Using the recoil to blast yourself over top of another tank and then raining fire upon them is super satisfying when you get it to work properly. Other strategies like burrowing yourself into hole and letting other people duke it out also work well although the sea is rising so you are going to have to get out of there sooner or later. Each match only lasts a couple minutes at most which is a perfect length for mobile allowing you get a quick game in – you know like when you should actually be doing other stuff.

Progression in the game is done through XP gained based on your performance in matches as well as achieving goals. New levels unlock new weapons that can be brought with you into games. This is maybe one minor quibble I have with the game. I tend to like when upgrades in battle royale games are purely cosmetic. When you start out you can really only bring one weapon – which is totally fine – but matchmaking pits you against players of a higher level that have better weapons like the homing missle. When this happens it can be difficult to win. The only of the weapons that is maybe a little overpowered is the aforementioned homing missile. Still it is kind of a minor issue because the games are quick anyway and you do level up at a fair pace.

Technical

If you geek out about the development side of things (which we do a lot here) you will find it interesting that the game was developed in the open source Godot Engine. In fact there is a strong open source core with this game which is something I always love to see and definitely gets bonus points. Of course the game has to be fun first but if you can make a fun multiplayer game on open source that is seriously legit. Additionally, you will notice that there are no ads in this game. This is so refreshing. So many games **cough cough ** Mr AutoFire pepper you with adds. Mobile game ads might be one of the most annoying things on earth. Here they don’t do that at all and I am much more inclined to make a purchase in support as a result.

Final Verdict

Anyway, enough about that. This is an excellent game. You should go get it now. It is well worth the download and one that is going to have a place on my home screen for a while to come.

Why should you trust us?

This is a great question. Of course anybody can write reviews online but we do think our opinion is worth something since for one we have been gaming a long time – like a really long time. We only post reviews of games that we have taken our time on and only recommend games that we really enjoy. The standard is if it would stay on our home screen to just play for fun then it is recommended. Finally, we are game developers ourselves so we bring a bit of insight on how these games are made and respect the hard work dedication and time it takes to make a well crafted game.