Rover Wars

Genre: Real-Time Strategy

Players: 1-8 Team Competitive (Local)

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Review:

Rover Wars is a fairly unique Real-Time Strategy game where players control a remote-operated robot that’s like a cross between a real-life NASA creation and Battlebots-style “killer robot”, and players must use this robot to attack enemies and also to drop different kinds of drone deployment towers, with the goal being to overpower an opponent who is doing the same.

The presentation here is decent, with a good amount of activity happening over the single-screen battlefield, represented by tiny 3D character models representing the robots, drones, buildings, and landscapes. One complaint I’ll make about the visuals, though – the drones are so tiny that it’s difficult to distinguish them from one another, and especially when the robots start piling up and causing parts to fly around and explosions to go off, it’s super-easy to lose track of your own rover in the fray.

The militaristic soundtrack here is decent, I suppose, but completely forgettable, and while explosions and attacks sound fine, the lack of sounds for your own rover as well as what seems like a sound mixing issue combine to make the game feel strangely quiet. It’s not horrible, but it’s certainly underwhelming.

As for the gameplay… ~sigh~

I really want a great Real-Time Strategy game on the Switch that isn’t a Tower Defense game (well, other than Pikmin 3 Deluxe, which is really its own thing). And while Rover Wars’ drone towers bear some similarity to what you might find in a Tower Defense game, I don’t really think this game fits in that genre. So I had high hopes here, and what’s more Rover Wars does have some potential to be unique and interesting.

This is a game that basically makes the cursor you use to place structures be a hero unit you use to attack as well, and makes structures auto-produce units that automatically attack the enemy so players can be hands-off production and focus on building and precision strikes. What this translates to is a core gameplay that is absurdly simple and user-friendly. This feels like an RTS with gameplay that a child could easily pick up and play, and the fact that this game supports up to 8 players at once makes that even better… but all of that is in theory. In practice, this game is a mess.

Firstly, the game’s campaign, which I suppose is the closest you’ll get to a tutorial, does nothing to indicate the strengths and weaknesses of different unit types. Players can place three different types of towers, but it’s not quite clear what the strategy is in placing them. The campaign also doesn’t make clear how your hero unit’s orbital laser ability works, and in general resource management is something players are left to figure out on their own. Hell, you’re not even given a good indication of what does and doesn’t provide you with resources, and you’ll need to discover this on your own.

What’s more, the lack of any apparent way to upgrade towers instead of simply placing new ones pretty much ensures that the winner will be the player who manages to build the most and has the best coverage, which means that things will likely get pretty cluttered. Not only does this make the game visually difficult to parse, but it makes things hard to navigate as well. It’s frustrating when I lose my rover in all of the noise and try to move around a bit to catch sight of where I am, only to realize after a moment that I’m not moving because I got trapped between towers.

The result of all of this is that the gameplay doesn’t really feel strategic, it feels like throwing a bunch of stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks, and while the pure simplicity of boiling this genre down to core essentials is appealing, it only works if you retain the strategic play, and I feel like the strategy is utterly lost here.

Despite all of my complaints, I cannot call Rover Wars a bad game. Its simplicity and 8-player competitive play certainly makes it appealing for an 8-player throwdown regardless of age or experience, but this simplicity is undercut by obscuring its mechanics and not properly explaining them. And anyone looking for any sort of intelligent gameplay the genre is known for will find it missing here. In short, this is a game that may entertain groups of people wanting something dumb and frenetic, but Strategy fans will be disappointed.

tl;dr – Rover Wars is a Real-Time Strategy game that boils the genre down to basics, having players moving a robotic rover unit to attack enemies and construct automatic drone-producing towers. Unfortunately, the game’s systems are not adequately explained to the player, the visuals make it difficult to parse information, and the gameplay is too messy and frenetic to feel all that strategic. There’s still some value in this game as a brainless multiplayer throwdown, but Strategy fans will be disappointed.

Grade: C-

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