Quadroids – Review

When lemmings arrived in the early 90’s it was a unique puzzle game that found fame due to the personality, presentation and some mind-bending puzzles, there’s been a few clones released over the last 3 decades, as well as multiple other Lemmings titles, but nothing has really tried to expand on the idea of leading out suicidal little pals away from their own demise.

Quadroids is one game that finally tries to take that loveable concept and provide something new, by throwing four instances on screen, which isn’t quite as confusing as it might sound.

The earth is in ruins and a ship is sent to the stars to find new worlds to inhabit with an AI on board and the machinery to make autonomous robots, there’s a few complications but eventually you’ll encounter a new galaxy, where you’ll need to guide your Quadroids, AI pals to their goal to conquer each area as you inhabit each planet in the galaxy.

Rather than have indirect control over each lemming-like AI, by being able to allocate abilities such as climbing, building or falling with an umbrella, Quadroids allows single-button control of everything in that quadrant.

These four quadrants are shown top and bottom on the left and right, with each trigger and bumper controlling an independent area. I went for the alternate method with triggers controlling the top two areas and bumpers the bottom two, but was easily able to navigate one of the bots through all four areas to the goal by hitting the corresponding button to make the little bot jump to avoid a few basic obstacles

As you progress beyond the first world, obstacles become a little more dangerous such as spikes, hammer like traps and acid traps, but you’ll soon learn to utilise these to bypass more challenging areas.

You might need to sacrifice a few bots, on spikes to utilise their corpse as a safe platform for another bot to pass, or maybe throwing a couple in that pool of acid, to use their head as a bridge before their body is fully consumed, which means killing off a few more bots as you create a timely passage for one successful droid to eventually reach the end.

This is where a few problems start to sneak in, especially towards the half way point of the game, where more and more levels require timely sacrifices, and precise jumps, because juggling both triggers and bumpers isn’t the most responsive method for pixel perfect jumps, and while it would have been a little more awkward to get used to, I feel using the four face buttons might have at least provided an option for more responsive controls.

While you will kill of many, many droids in trying to create a safe route through the level, the vast majority are going to be your own fault, so there’s a welcome feeling of accomplishment when it all does all click together.

Unfortunately though, when you’re already controlling multiple droids, across various areas, it can feel a little unfair when you need consistent pixel-perfect jumps from what is ultimately a poor and unresponsive control scheme.

I do appreciate the concept of controlling four areas, but with droids reproduced and thrown out everytime it’s predecessor meets it’s demise, I would have loved something like a loop/record scheme for solo players where you could maybe hold the LT button to train the AI, allowing you to concentrate on the next area.

As it is, it just feels a little random, and when levels start to get difficult enough to prove a challenge, it’s a shame the challenge is as much down to the control scheme and not mind-bending puzzles we were promised.

Moving on to presentation, graphics are a little basic, which is understandable considering the relatively simple roots and the one-man development team,

obstacles are clearly visible, and areas are usually coloured sufficiently so you can see how a droid will progress into the next area.

unfortunately though my main complaint is that the 4 quadrants are often their own area, not just 4 separate control areas for a single screen, so sometimes a droid isn’t going to emerge where you think, which can sometimes lead to a few more annoying and very annoying deaths down to the games presentation and not your own control of it.

one saving grace is the co-operative play, which allows you to have 2-4 players each controlling certain quadrants. This makes the game considerably more fun and controllable when you’re only having to worry about 1 or 2 areas and not all 4, which goes a long way to easing the issues thrown up by the controls and presentation.

Overall I enjoyed Quadroids and can happily recommend it if you plan on playing it with a friend, but for anyone hoping for a modern reimagining of Lemmings to enjoy in their own, they’re likely to find the control and presentation more of a hurdle when playing solo.

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