Woeful Woebots first seemed to me like yet another shooter, but it touches the right areas to make it feel different than the others. Woeful Woebots reminds me the fun shooting craze like in Ratchet & Clank, which is one of my favorite games of all time. What I loved about the game was the cool guns, the cartoon-style, and humoristic art style and animations, seeing robots blowing up into pieces and the music and sound effects wrap it up into an amazing gameplay experience. In those aspects, Woeful Woebots really reminds me of the fun that I had there, but of course, it's a different game in its core.
As of the time of writing Woeful Woebots is still under development and available as an Early Access game via Steam. The developer plans to add many new features, including Steam leaderboard, more maps (e.g. The Garbage Shute, The Mezzanine, The Factory), more enemy types, items, and weapons.
Even in its current state, the game is really fun to play and you can already see where the developer is going with it. The game was developed to be super fun yet challenging by implementing a smart AI tactical thinking. Of course, it's a first-person shooter, so the most important thing in these type of games is that you can feel the power of your weapons. How do you do that exactly? well, in Woeful Woebots you can blast things to pieces with semi-destructible environments (just don't expect Battlefield 3 Close-quarters like destruction) and wrack enemy robots to pieces with stunning vivid visual effects.
I also really liked the character design and the emphasize of humor touches that make this game more exciting and amusing to play. You can see that in the designs of the street signs, the character and item's design and animation. I like vivid cartoon-style shooters because for me they just feel more alive, I feel like partying and having fun and it really makes me feel a sense of joy. Of course, it's not for everyone's taste but if you like the art style of Ratchet & Clank and Overwatch, you'll love Woeful Woebots' art-style as well.
I've taken a look at HelloBard YouTube channel, and they have previously developed games like Animal Drivers, Jack & Joe, a memory game for Apple's iWatch called Much Memo and Flashlight Kawaii, which are cute looking games with vivid and cartoon-ish art style. It looks like this is their biggest game yet and their first VR game from what I can tell.
Woeful Woebots will certainly appeal to those of you who love action-packed first-person shooter and intense arcade action where you can lay out destruction all over the place. I really like the whole presentation approach for this game. Just look at their trailer where the say "Fake Festival Award" and "I'm so indie I can't afford real festival entry fees", I just laughed out loud when I saw this. I love humor in games and I think this is one of Hello Bard AS' best assets, this humor touches that influence many of the design decisions.
Woeful Woebots also carries a backstory. You play as the creator os a massive robotics corporation. One day your robots have suddenly gotten a free will and a desire to destroy the one who has created them—this is you by the way, just in case you forgot.
The developer also mentioned "semi-guaranteed" no motion sickness, so we can expect the game to be comfortable to play for those who easily suffer from motion sickness. The developer mentioned that there is no multiplayer and seems like it's proud of it, but I actually think that especially for this game with its unique characters and maps, a multiplayer mode isn't a bad idea, don't you think?
Overall, Woeful Woebots is shaping up to be a really cool room-scale VR shooter. As I mentioned, you can get it in Early Access via Steam and support the developer. Woeful Woebots deserve out IMPRESSIVE AWARD and we are looking forward to the upcoming updates.
Image credit: Hello Bard AS