Robothorium: Sci-fi Dungeon Crawler

Robothorium. This one is dungeon crawler with some rogue elements. But don’t compare it to Darkest Dungeon. This game is way easier that DD, yes there is permanent destruction of your robot team mates but only on hardest difficulty. On normal you need to fix “red HP” damage after mission is over. On easy you don’t even need to heal.

 Anyway, here the plot. In the near future year 2055 robotics are in full bloom. Everybody is either a robot or chromed up cyborg, no pure humans anymore. And there is that big giga corporation called “BreakTech”. And we are group of robots lead by Sarah Simov. Our goal is to take out BreakTech and world’s president Jaklov because they abuse their power and they instigated civil war: humans versus cyborgs versus robots. Also Sarah’s father was kidnaped by them. But there are also others factions. 

First one is “Humanobots” lead by old dude in a yellow trench coat named John Wint. They are the good guys, they want everyone to have equal rights. Second one is 

“Supermachine” those are the extremists of this world, basically there Benders in “kill all humans” mode lead by a red robot called Halt.

“Cyber Rights” is the third faction lead by cyborg Craig Hashan. As you could’ve guessed they fight for rights of the cyborgs. Because BreakTech use controls chip to rid cyborgs of their consciences to make them BT obedient dolls. 

“Biothorium” Those one fight for cyborg rights too but they are more extremist. Their leader crazy mechanic/doctor woman with dreads named Soraya Rafi. You see there is a disease going around that originated in cyborgs. They need to consume substance called “thorium” in order to function. But consummation of this substance causes the thorium disease in humans. And Rafi wants to find vaccine for that disease. For that she would even kidnap cyborg s to experiment on them and often cyborgs would not survive the procedure.

“The Chip” is the last faction. Not sure about those guys I think they just want to profit from the situation by making a black market. But they will help you in some missions and they will spawn piñata bots. They are led by guy named Jeff Wiedmann.

Gameplay. It is a dungeon crawler, quite a simple dungeon crawler. We have a goal, usually it is stuff like “find and kill zealous worker” or “install couple of spy bugs”, “save a robot”. We go through a set of rooms that could contain an event or a chest or several of them. They are quite simple too. If we see a scan drone we can either, try to fool it, destroy or deactivate it. If we fail we will suffer a danger level increase and a possible other penalty such as bad status or damage. Danger level is similar to what Darkest Dungeon has it means, the higher it is the lower your chances of success are. Some of the events can increase or decrease our reputation with a faction depends if we were successful.  Of course we also will meet enemies along the way. Usually enemy team will have one more team member than we. Fights are not hard, but they can be long and tedious.

Our team. We have 8 robots to pick from different countries.  Here is the list:

First one is WAR X model. It was made in 2028 after Russo Turkish war. This model is mostly for damage dealing be it concentrated on one target or spread on all of targets.  But it has some buffs such as speed boost or critical hit chance boost. It has okayish defense and medium shield capacity.

Second is GUARD X model. Made in UK to replace the royal guards. The basic principal of this model is to reduce its own shield in order to do more damage. But it can also restore its shield even faster. It has okay debuff capabilities.

Third one is REPAIR X. German repair drone. While it doesn’t fix the structure of a robot it can quickly restore shield of a robot. Since it is support model it doesn’t have good attack, defense or shield. But it has defense debuff ability and it can also reduce enemy’s shield regeneration. 

Next on the list is RIOT X model. Made in France in response to many civil riots. It carries a big shield and has very good defense. While attacking capabilities are lacking it is compensated in amount of debuffs it can apply to the enemy team. It can also cover allies with its shield and provoke enemies to attack it.  

Next. SCOUT X. Chinese scouting drone. I didn’t really use so I don’t know what can it do.  But according to the description list it has good attacking and supporting capabilities. 

Next model. ZERKER X. Brazilian robot that looks like EVA 01. Didn’t use that one either. It has ridiculous attack and speed and abysmal defense. Guess it’ll work good in pair with RIOT X. Model was created in 2030 to fight drug cartels in favelas. 

Ok, just two model left. LADY X. Made in Japan.  Was first made to be an actress in 4D movies…. I hope it’s AV movies. Was supposed to show negative side of sexual objectification of robots which is failed miserably to no one surprise. In a fight it’s more of an attacker then its first intended purpose of support robot. This model is unique due to its ability to switch modes from support buffs to debuffs. It doesn’t have basic attack but it wield all the skill it has unlike the rest of the robots that must pick 3 out of 6 available skills.

Last one. SONG X from… really? From Senegal. Not a combat model but used in a combat anyways. It doesn’t have basic attack, but just like lady it has buffs and debuffs. Unique trait of that model is that its “basic attack” which is drums will overheat enemies or cool down our robots if we target allies. Doesn’t have direct way to damage enemies instead it deals damage based on how overheated your enemies.

Right. Just couple more things. Both you and enemies will generate heat in battle. If you go over your limit you’ll be stunned for 1 round and heat bar will be set back to zero. Apart from regular dungeon crawler missions here are also send off mission, where you take one of your team and send it one country to do whatever they want. Equipment, shitton of it. Mostly useless, just pick whatever gives you the most attack, defense, shield and speed. There are also mythical and set items. Mythical are found randomly dropped from your enemies and they have an extra trait. Set items are only made from blueprints that are drops from enemies. Just like mythical they provide an extra bonus but you need to have full set in order to use all the bonuses. 

Do I recommend it? Yes. It’s okay dungeon crawler nothing bad nothing too good, worth couple of evening and it even has a decent OST.