Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Website: https://mad-cookies.itch.io/cardbob
Price: $9.99 Steam and GoG
Blurb: “Explore sci-fi dungeons, collect loot, and negotiate the highest prices in this action roguelite, set in a 3D cardboard world. Grow stronger with each attempt. Be the unlikely hero.“
So you are a cardboard robot, who finds a dungeon entrance in his room. What do you mean, you need a story to enjoy mindless violence? This is a game that previously gave me issues extracting the content, but with engrampa installed and all my compression programs to boot, I am cardbob-less no more! Yay! Though, now I wonder where my bob card is (banking card for kids).
At first, I was, like, this dude is stiff, but you are cardboard. So the stiff character is given a pass.
Installation:
The game is a whole 240MB, which gets a giant thumbs up from me. It uses the standard GOG games installer, giving one a next-next Windows experience. There were no issues here.
Once installed, the game did try its luck with port 57343 for some reason, but on 127.0.0.1, and once only. This makes me think it has something to do with the Godot Engine, rather than anything nefarious. (If you block this request, the game does not start.) However, I kept Ubuntu on “flight mode”, just in case.
First Impressions:
I am biased when it comes to isometric games. I love ‘em to bits. The look is consistent, with cardboard rimming the playing area (even though the text and interface spots are very “electronic”, to remind you that CardBob is in fact, a robot). The movement feels smooth, and the controls feel responsive, even though I’m faffing my way around with the trackpad, as I’m too lazy to go find batteries for my mouse.
With a flimsy premise that I gave you earlier, you might think, well what is the point? You see, the game puts you in the shoes of Cardbob, a hi-tech card-board robot with access to a mysterious dungeon system in his basement. You collect items to sell to traders later on. You have to negotiate for the best price when selling the dungeon items to NPCs. The description says: Look after your shop in a sci-fi cardboard universe? (Yup, made me curious too!). Go on dungeon runs to collect rare items and negotiate their price with traders. Meet security robots that try to stop you, bosses, and unique types of rooms! Grow stronger (??) and become the top trader in the town of neon lights and cardboard robots. And don’t get wet, I suppose?
Gameplay:
The game controls with the standard WASD keys and a mouse or a controller. It very much feels like an eggsbox or praystation game. Your character has a long-range and short-range attack, with either the left or right click. This is where I ran into my first issue, in the training ground. (Feel free to read the rest of the paragraph in Skeletor’s voice). You see, when I go down to beat the kidnapped kids in my basement, sometimes one gets in the way and catches a stray shot from my belt, but I always end up getting my target; here it seems CardBob’s targeting system and mine do not overlap.
It is not clear what motivates and drives our cardboard robot to harm others, but they did mention running a shop. Is it social commentary on how we profit on the deaths of others, or simple terrorism? I mean CardBob wears erasers for shoes, is it to erase his footprints as he makes them, or is it to erase his past, like it never happened? Then did he really target the wrong training dummy or are we judging him?
Graphics:
The game is visually impressive, with good-looking dungeons that appeal to my nostalgia, where in my younger years, I would build dungeons from cardboard for DnD sessions. It is a mixed bag though, with some low-poly stuff mixed into the soup that make up this game. I love that when you “die” in the dungeon, the cut scene is of a long sleek car pulling up and tossing you to the curb, before driving off. My fans did go from zero to full taps when I entered the dungeon, but I did have my Nvidia server settings set to “performance”, so there’s that…
Sound:
There are tunes for every occasion, and I love it. Enter a new area and you are treated to a new tune. The sounds felt a bit underwhelming, though. When you enter the first Dungeon, there are these… well let’s call them tanks for now, that fire cannon balls at your character. I would have preferred a bit more punch, I mean those are bombs after all. Bombs explode and have thud and crash sounds, not pops. My sword, “the chopstick”, also needs a satisfying sound when hitting enemies, even if it is the plink of a chopstick, you know what I mean? I don’t expect it to drown out the music, but keep me interested.
Conclusion:
I’m not sure what the game was trying to be, or what the original plan was, but it does feel like a mish-mash of ideas, with no clear intent. That said, it is some mindless fun and that is all that counts (he says looking at the clock and it says 23:10 already). With the fun, there was also some frustration, especially with the pathing of my chopstick, not returning to my character immediately, but taking the long way home, smelling the flowers in the fields where I was two seconds ago. This lazy pathing and slow return did not make the game feel ‘fast-paced’, rather dreamy and ‘floaty’. Nothing jumped out at me, everything felt middle of the road and I don’t know if I did something wrong, or I’m just bad at video games, but I did not get to run my “shop” as I was promised.
I will play this some more, just for the playing sake, instead of playing and analyzing everything and dying, while looking around. (The cardboard world is fascinating.) The gameplay is there.