To anyone who has a Groupee's account and has previously purchased bundles from them; they are shutting their servers down soon; someone in the chat said the download servers would be shutting on the 21st of August. I have found some Greenlight bundles with unredeemed Steam keys, but most of the earlier bundles seem to have been voided.

Bots City:

In Brief:
Bots City is a side scrolling Action Platformer/shooter game. It was released on Steam on the 11th Jul 2022 though for a pixel art platformer it's rather expensive at £32.99 (that's got to be an error). It's never been given away before.

You can see a video of game play via the Steam page HERE and HERE.

The Game:
The aim of the game is to get to the main computer to deactivate the robots. Watch out when destroying robots as they explode leaving a trail of deadly debris. Pick up extra ammo via the orange yellow orbs.

The main menu is accessed using the arrow keys and enter to activate your selection. Selecting options allows you to toggle between full screen and an adjustable window, with toggles to turn off the sound and music.

When you start the game a black screen appears with the developers intro to the games story i.e.

Artificial intelligence is out of control. Only a Hero can stop this madness. by accessing the main computer and disable it, thereby disabling all robots. Our hero has only one weapon, but that won't stop him!

To go to the next screen press any key

You get five lives; and can take four hits before losing a life. Lose a life and you you start from the beginning again, lose all of your lives and lose everything you've collected.

There are different area's to explore with some simple puzzles to solve, each area has different enemies. If you leave the game before completing the first area you will have to start from the beginning. There is a continue feature; this activates once you've passed the first level. Leaving the game after this will allow you to carry on where you left off; however, if you select play instead of continue, you'll lose all your progress. There are no profiles, so this isn't a family friendly game, (with respect to all the family being able to play the game and keep their place).

Controls:
Controls are quite intuitive with your left hand controlling weapon use and jumping and your right hand using the movement controls and jumping. There's also support for a game controller, which I found much easier to use playing this game even though I tend to shy away from controllers.

Keyboard Controls:

Arrow Keys = Walking
Z = Jump or Up arrow
Down Arrow + Z = Drop down a platform
X = Shoot

Gamepad Controls:

D Pad = Walking
A = Jump
D Pad Down + A = Drop down a platform
X = Attack

The D Pad and A button are used to access the menus. Also, while in game pressing the forward arrow (start) button will pause the game and allow you to return to the main menu if you wish. I did find an issue with my Microsoft controller; when using the shoot command, unless you then press another button the weapon appears to continues to fire, but no bullets are expended. you can stop this animation by pressing the A button. Ammunition pick ups tend to add around 30 rounds per pick up.

Conclusion:
Overall Bots City is a reasonably challenging and colourful retro pixel platformer. Unfortunately after several attempts I wasn't able to make it to the end of the first level as I'm really bad with platformer game play. The only platformer game I actually excel at is a game called Gish (created by one of the developers of Super Meat Boy and, which I've been playing on and off since buying it in the early 2000's.

With respect to Bots City, every time I lost a life I always ended up at the beginning of the game, which started to become a little tedious after several attempts; my fingers just don't have the dexterity they used to have :( I'm hoping there are save points included with the game if I persevere later. If anyone does finds save points before the end of a level, please do post details here. There's no level map, so I can't say how many levels we get, but it does look like there are three different environment types. If Steams price is correct, I would expect a lot more levels, however, I still think the quoted price on Steam is a mistake.

We've had a couple of very similar games given away here over the last few years, using the same or similar mechanics, though obviously with different characters, weapon types and environments e.g. Grimland (June 16, 2022) that used a sword instead of a gun :)

Notes on Security

I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game using Virus Total and it found zero hits from 61 antimalware engines. You can see the results of the scan via the following link:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/06c52142893a19766876884af55d999dc9f8ac327bfcda1cd55bb1e199b4a14e?nocache=1

Notes on Security

I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game using Virus Total and it found zero hits from 61 antimalware engines. You can see the results of the scan via the following link:

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/06c52142893a19766876884af55d999dc9f8ac327bfcda1cd55bb1e199b4a14e?nocache=1