Don't Die, Mr. Robot! (iOS) Review

Don't Die, Mr. Robot! is a bullet-hell title at its very simplest core, with almost everything stripped from the genre besides very basic things such as dodging enemies and grazing. It is, actually, not even possible to shoot enemies. Instead they are killed by picking up fruit, which creates shockwaves when touched that kill enemies and make other fruit in its way explode into new shockwaves.

While the gameplay is simple and might get repetitive very fast, Don't Die, Mr. Robot! does a weird thing in how it handles stages. Instead of traditional stages, each arena is a game mode with different rules and criteria to win. It can range from a pacific survival round to a grazing challenge. It seems like nothing stopped the creativity when it came to different challenges.

However, the problem is that Don't Die, Mr. Robot! has an expiration date, and it is not fun for as long as might be desired. While the modes are enjoyable to a degree, they are only fun for a couple of runs. It grows old extremely quickly as the core mechanics are too shallow to do the fun challenges justice.

The single biggest problem, though, is the way it controls. Everyone who has ever played a bullet-hell title knows that precise and tight controls are a must, since any mid-game twitch is going to result in instant death. Unlike in the extremely precise and addictive Death Ray Manta, for which Mr. Robot's developer, Infinite State Games, actually did the soundtrack, this is not the case here, as the game is steered by the smart phone's gyro. While in theory it seems logical, as it is extremely sensitive and can go in many directions, anyone who has ever tried to play a game with a gyro can testify that it is not at all precise and does often get its own life. This makes the game near unplayable as a bullet-hell title, since deaths will occur too often thanks to the faulty input.

Don't Die, Mr. Robot! has interesting ideas, but makes some disappointing design choices. Making the gyro as the controller is the tip of the iceberg, but it could also have fleshed out the core mechanics more to make things more interesting. Overall, this all feels rather faulty, and that is sad as the game could have been extremely enjoyable with more polish and better controls.