A few games take inspiration from the Roomba and other autonomous cleaning robots. Splatterbot is the latest, putting you in charge of a robot that, instead of cleaning things, leaves a paint trail behind it. The goal is to paint as much of the arena in your colour as possible within the time limit. This 1-4 player arcade party game is very straightforward and direct, but what it does, it does well.
You can play Splatterbot in free-for-all or 2v2 team mode, adding some unlockable hats and trails to your robot for customisation if you wish. There are six arenas to choose from, which is a small selection, but each arena has some unique traits. One is on the docks, requiring you to jump between boats. Another is in an office, and the glass walls are all smashable. The most intricate is a factory with a conveyor belt, allowing you to move faster around the edge of the map. Whilst the theming could have allowed for more crazy interactions, each arena is different and it keeps things fresh for a while.
Each match starts off with 4 robots in each corner. AI can fill in missing slots, and they are largely competent except for a few situations when AI stops dead in its tracks, sometimes for up to a minute before kicking back into life again. This is situational to a couple of specific maps and will hopefully get patched out, as it will ruin a match when it happens. Aside from that, you’ll be looking to paint the floor with your colour as much as possible by moving around and tactically painting over other players’ paint. There is a short dash ability, but dashing doesn’t paint the floor, so use it wisely. Wisely often means to snag a power-up from under the wheels of your opponents and that’s because power-ups are powerful in Splatterbot.
Each power-up increases your speed and robot size (and therefore your painting footprint), but the key twist is that they are permanent upgrades for that whole match. You can upgrade each of these twice, and this makes collecting and prioritising power-ups crucial for success. In a 4-player battle where everyone is alert, it is usually the power-ups that make the difference between winning and losing. It’s a frantic charge to grab them, and in team mode, you can play offence and defence to try and block your opposing team to let your teammate grab a power-up. There are also splatterpots that splash paint like an area of attack, and paintballs, which you can push around the arena, further rolling your paint out. I wish the paintballs were lighter because this could have caused so much frantic chaos, which they only do in the bouncey-walled hexagon arena. It could have been a clever way to uneven the odds.
The more you play, the more customisation options you unlock, and whilst there aren’t tons of them, they make a difference… and that’s all she wrote!
Splatterbot does exactly what it says on the tin, nothing more, nothing less. The moment-to-moment gameplay is fun and engaging, but the lack of play options and arena layouts means that I’d recommend playing Splatterbot for short, sharp sessions, little and often. The core gameplay is fun, but it needs space to keep it fresh. Part of what makes it fun is the straightforward delivery of it. If you have 4 players of equal skill, it’s almost always a tight last-second change that decides who wins. What makes it fun also limits its appeal a little, and if some additional arenas and maybe a pulse button to shoot the paintballs around the level were added, this would have more staying power. As is, Splatterbot is still good, clean, non-violent family gaming.
Review copy provided by the developer. Splatterbot is out on PC.
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