I love it when games throw ridiculous hordes of enemies at you. The spectacle of blasting or tearing apart dozens of enemies at once is uniquely overwhelming, and I jump at any chance to partake. PETAFAB: Bot Invasion, a game with a truly unfortunate name, is built around offering such an experience that will run on even the weakest hardware. It does nail the feeling of being beset upon by masses of robots, but is the game worth it at this price point?
PETAFAB: Bot Invasion retails for $10 USD, which is fairly cheap, so it wouldn’t be hard to assume that it’ll be hard for it to reach that level of value. However, the game has just three levels, each of which can be blasted through in a few minutes, depending. There are three difficulty levels, and each one has higher enemy damage and increases the enemy count, but this is very much a score-chasing game more than anything else.
There’s a score multiplier for racking up a kill combo and, once you complete a level, your score is uploaded to a leaderboard. The levels themselves play out in basic fashion; you’re dropped into a level and tons of enemies start going after you. You’re meant to grab weapons and items to survive and kill enough robots, at which point a large boss will come out that you need to fight. Once you get their health all the way down, they self-destruct, and the level ends.
The action itself is pretty satisfactory, as there’s a ridiculous level of carnage onscreen at most times. Instead of using regular guns, you’ll have explosives at your disposal, including a bazooka and grenades. You run out of ammo quickly, though, so you have to keep moving while murderous bots are on your tail. They can kill you fast, too, so even though the levels are incredibly short, you can find yourself having to start over very shortly.
The environment gets damaged by explosions, meaning you’ll constantly witness a huge number of enemies getting slammed with your attacks as the geometry around them gets blown apart. The spectacle is just what it should be, plus there are three different character classes, all with their own passives and ultimates, including a soldier with extra health who heals passively and a scout that moves faster and jumps higher in exchange for being able to take less damage.
Although I don’t love the weapon variety here, the game simply needed more content to justify its price point. Not having any sort of survival mode where you have extra ammo and just lay waste to infinitely spawning robots is a no-brainer inclusion, and not having it (or really anything else) was a baffling decision. Instead, you’ve got a game that you might be through with in literal minutes due to how little there is to do.
Players can make their own levels, although there isn’t a single one of these nearly a week after the game’s launch, so the three levels are all there is. I do mostly like PETAFAB: Bot Invasion‘s gameplay and core elements, but charging more than a $1 or $2 USD for something with such a paltry level of content is not something I can recommend. If each level had a survival mode or something, then maybe, but unless that’s added or you just love leaderboard chasing, this is a tough sell.
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