Grade: B
Most acrobatic robot ever
Released in 2015 by Ruxar games, Izbot tells a tale set in the far distant future where the terrible tyranny of humans has been stopped and pacifist robots rule the land. But, sadly, a strange organic scourge threatens this robot-topia, and it’s up to our Izbot hero to get to the bottom of it.
Izbot, at its core, is an action platformer. As a result, the levels are relatively short, and after a quick on-ramp, you need to accomplish the devilishly difficult acrobatic tricks required to get through each stage.
Challenge accepted
When I first picked up Izbot, I played for about 30 minutes total and down the game. I didn’t find anything that grabbed my attention. Fast forward two months later, and I gave it another try. This time, I got pulled in and ended up watching a whole season of 30rock while dashing around and avoiding destruction at the hands of the organics.
The controls are simple. Move, dash, jump, and double jump. The environments have new twists and obstacles throughout, which keeps things varied. The organics you encounter are bats, blobs, ostriches, rhinoceroses. You can defeat the monsters by jumping on top of them. The squish animation is immensely satisfying.
The game is broken into 60 normal levels and three boss levels. By level 21, the difficulty ramps from “jeez…this is hard”. By level 60, the difficulty builds to a climactic “is this even humanly possible?!”. There are no lives or retries in Izbot. You either succeed in traversing the whole level, or you start back right at the beginning.
Overall Impression
There’s nothing terrible about Izbot, but nothing grabs you either. The vast majority of the game has you platforming through hurdles while avoiding death. It’s a rather conventional gaming premise. Credit where it’s due, though, Izbot executed excellently on its design.
Overall, Izbot reminded me how far we have to go until truly acrobatic robots are jumping around. I think all of us organics are safe for a while, yet, still. Or are we?!
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