Review | Robin: Race!

LifeisXbox’s Robin: Race review | I’m always up for a fun race game. If I don’t know what game to play, I’ll usually turn on my Switch and start playing some Mario Kart. Now, discovering new and interesting race games is always a pleasure. Developer Netzweck GmbH is releasing their brand new super fast 3D third-person cartoon racing game called Robin: Race today. This game is available on PC and Android phones, but is it worth spending your money on? Let’s find out!

We played Robin: Race! for 2 hours on PC. This game is available on Windows, Linux and Android.

What we liked!

• Gameplay | The gameplay and controls are very easy in Robin: Race. Let’s start with the controls: it’s just going left, right, and jumping. This is not explained though, and the controls are not in the options menu either. Because they are so easy, I had no issue with this though. Anyway; the standard input is that your bunny runs automatically, so you’ll only have to go left and right. But you can also control the bunny manually. I found the autorun to be more fun, but the manual option provided slightly more challenge. There are three game modes: single player, multiplayer, and time trial. You will also pick a track, and a difficulty level (easy-normal-hard-legend). In the first two modes, you try to get the highest score possible. You start out with, for example, 20 seconds (more or less depending on the difficulty level) and you try to score as many points as possible. But you also try to stay alive for as long as possible. You’ll come across fires, which will reduce your time with a few seconds, and there will also be green essences on your path, which will increase your time. So basically you want to take all the green essences in order to race longer and gain more points. The time trial mode works a bit different. You’ll also have to pick a number of rounds you want to run (1 to 4). There will also be purple fires that slow you down, and essences that increase your speed. Your goal is to finish the set amount of rounds in the fastest time possible.
• Scores | Your bunny can level up by gaining XP. Depending on how many rounds you were able to run, you’ll get more XP. If you run out of time in the first round, you get 50 XP. Making it to the second round gains your bunny 100 XP, and so on. I don’t really know what the point of leveling up is, since I haven’t encountered any rewards that come with leveling up. You can also consult high scores for all three game modes. Since you create up to four bunnies to play with, you can compare scores there. It is nice that you can constantly try and beat your own score, but also beat other player’s scores.
• Sounds | The soundtrack is very high-paced, just like the gameplay. This ensures that they make a perfect match. Every track has its own soundtrack, which is very nice. The sound effects however, might as well been left out. There are two sounds indicating losing and gaining time but they are so boring and basic, there are quite unnecessary, especially since your timer will flash when you gain or lose time.

Somewhere between

• Limited tracks | Right now, there is a total of eight tracks. This doesn’t sound like a lot, and it really isn’t. There is variation, but don’t really féél that different from each other. Some have hills, which make things more fun, others have split directions where you have to pick where to go, but all in all, the tracks aren’t that thrilling. They don’t even have names, they’re just called ‘Track 1’ etc. I feel like some effort could at least have been put into naming the tracks in Robin: Race.
• Multiplayer mode | There are two ways to play multiplayer. You can create up to four profiles in Robin: Race, and can thus get your housemates to give it a go. There is also a LAN multiplayer option, and cross platform play is possible here. I always love seeing cross platform play being supported, but I wasn’t able to try out the LAN multiplayer. I would loved a basic multiplayer mode where I could just join any match, instead of having to provide a host IPv4 name. Since I don’t know any people who own Robin: Race (and I tested this before release), this game mode was just not interesting to me.
• Graphics | The graphics are very basic and honestly don’t really have anything worth mentioning. The game does offer graphics settings options to support both low- and high-end computers equally well, and I do like that, especially since it’s such a simple game that everyone can enjoy.

What we disliked

• Repetitive | Robin: Race is fun for a little while, but after half an hour I had pretty much seen it all. I tried all tracks, and the time trial mode, as well as every difficulty. I didn’t really feel compelled to go back to the game and to improve my score very often. I mean, I did, for the purpose of testing Robin: Race, but I doubt I will spend many more hours in this game. It’s a fun casual game but it gets repetitive really quick, unfortunately.

CONCLUSION

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