***Today we are going to take a look at Insane Robots. This turn-based strategy/card game promises a fun singleplayer campaign, quick engaging turn-based combat with a dash of card game splashed in. Insane Robots is available on Steam for 19 Euros and 99 cents or your regional equivalent.***
***With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.***

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# Video Review

https://youtu.be/WVTu-2f7KBw

# Text Review

I’m a big fan of card games. Similarly to many people, I fell in love with them when I was young and I was first introduced to Magic: The Gathering. Later on Hearthstone only increased my love of card games so when I saw Insane Robots – a game that promised fun strategy card game in really cute graphics I immediately jump on to see what’s going on.

### Gameplay

And what exactly is going on? Well, let’s start by looking at the most important part in any game – its gameplay. Insane Robots combines two really popular genres – a turn-based strategy with a strategy card game. The turn-based strategy portion of the game takes places in the campaign, where you travel on a grid-based world seeking to survive each arena and reign victorious. The card part is actually in the battles, where you battle other robots using somewhat simplistic cards.

So let’s first talk about the turn-based strategy portion of the game as that will be much shorter. In each “chapter” of the campaign, you’ll going to get put into an arena where your sole goal will be to be the last surviving robot. This allows you to take pretty much three different strategic routes. First – to try to avoid combat as much as possible. Second – to engage as much as you can and kill everyone or third – a combination of the two. Each has its benefits as for example, just avoiding combat and letting the other robots destroy themselves in combat will obviously be a bit easier but on the other hand, avoiding combat will leave you starving for cash. And you need cash to purchase upgrades for your character. Whether its direct upgrades to your maximum health or augments that give benefits in battle.

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/516030/ss_ca72b0ddebbc9b02e4135433168abbea7eb9a039.1920x1080.jpg?t=1531907073

And you will be forced to engage in battle even if you try to avoid it as much as possible. So, how do the battles work? Actually pretty interestingly. At first glance, it may seem overly simplistic. You have your defense matrix on one side and your attack matrix on the other with boost matrix on top. Your goal is to have more power in your matrices than your opponent. If this is the case, on defense this means you will not take damage and on attack, it means you will deal damage.

But that is not all, you not only have attack, defense, and boost cards. You also get cards that enhance your matrices, glitch cards that can either lower your opponent’s power or boost your own – but somewhat randomly – direct damage cards, cards that give you more energy to use your cards and many others. But the really interesting and strategic part comes in combining cards. Yes, you heard me right. Whenever you have two cards of the same color in your hand you are able to combine them to create different and better cards. This manages to create an interesting mesh of fairly simple mechanics and complex mechanics making them game approachable even by people who aren’t well versed in card games while maintaining a highly complex mechanic for more experienced card game players.

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/516030/ss_6f0dcff843232476b8e0c558afedb5c3d3014b16.1920x1080.jpg?t=1531907073

Having good mechanics does not necessarily mean the game feels fun. But luckily here it is the case. The game does have a bit of a slow start I will admit that. But once you get into the mid-game it becomes incredibly fun as you are finally fully acquitted with all the mechanics and can use them to their full potential. Insane Robots actually feels like a perfect game to buy for someone if you want to get them into card games. It starts slow, allowing them to orient themselves and get more and more complex over time bridging the gap between traditional card games which can feel really overwhelming at first. And once you finish it, it hopefully leaves you starving for more complex card games.

### Graphics

So that’s pretty much all I wanted to say about the gameplay without spoiling the fun for you guys. Let’s now take a look at the graphics of Insane Robots. And I personally would just call them … cutesy. In a way, they remind of many modern cartoons you could see for example on Cartoon Network. And that is actually a good thing as I think this type of graphics can be appreciated by pretty much everyone including both children and adults.

### Story

Since the game also boasts a singleplayer campaign it also includes a story. I don’t think the story is particularly awesome but it does also not suffer from any obvious shortcoming. On the other hand, I don’t think the majority of players will be particularly interested in the story so, in the end, it doesn’t really matter.

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/516030/ss_bc2731fb3d81960a6a819cf3dff782f71f5bb249.1920x1080.jpg?t=1531907073

### Music

Another good thing about Insane Robots is its music. Which I can’t describe in any other words than purely awesome. Though I do have one problem with it. It’s insanely loud. I’ve played the game at 10 % loudness and it was still much louder than for example YouTube being played on full volume in the background. And you can’t put it any lower. I wish this wouldn’t be the case.

### Performance

Lastly, we should talk about how Insane Robots run. And I gotta say it runs smooth as butter. No lagging, no bugs, no crashes. This is how a game should be launched. Good job!

### Conclusion

So… in conclusion: Insane Robots is a fun entry into the strategic card game market and will surely find its crowd. It has a nice singleplayer campaign a multiplayer mode and can boast itself as the perfect game to introduce people to the card game genre in general. Thus you might expect me to recommend it to everyone. But not really. The fact is if you are already an experienced card gamer you might feel slightly underwhelmed by Insane Robots at least in its early phase. But for anyone who isn’t a long-standing member of the card game community, Insane Robots is a great choice.

So, that’s it for today guys. Hope you like the review and if you did, please consider upvoting the review and following my blog. And comment, if you have something you would like to add. See you guys later with more gaming content.

*Disclaimer: All the images have been taken directly from the Steam game page*