Some initial thoughts on Robocraft, the free to play game about building and fighting vehicles

Robocraft [Steam, Official Site], a free to play game about building robots and going into battle has now left Early Access, here's some thoughts.

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Like other free to play titles, Robocraft is another game that has an optional Premium membership. Robocraft is a little different though, as they offer a lifetime Premium subscription for £39.99. So unlike some games, you can play it for a while for free and pay a one off payment to get Premium forever. That's not too bad, but there's still a lot of complaints about it becoming pay to win.

If anything, they've actually improved the game quite a lot since I last played it. It was originally damn confusing with tech tiers and all sorts of craziness. Now there's none of that and it makes it a simpler, but more enjoyable experience, to me at least.

One strange issue was linking my Steam account, it said my Steam name was available, but it didn't let me register. Changing my name to something random did work, odd, but it worked in the end.

The Linux version for the most part does seem to run okay, apart from the resolution switcher always reverting to 800x600, so when changing settings you need to keep changing that back if you need to adjust anything. It also reverts my fullscreen setting on each launch too.

The building system is extremely easy to use! Pick a block, click it down, rotate with the mouse wheel and so on. Some games overcomplicate it, but it's really surprisingly easy to build anything you have the blocks to achieve.

I tested out building some robots and playing some games and I honestly came off quite impressed. At one point my mech's legs were destroyed, so I slid along the ground until I stopped and had to wait for the auto heal to kick in. I was left with 2-3 cubes and a turret that could still fire — amusing!

You seem to gain experience and level up even when playing battles against AI. For example: My team was defeated, but even so I levelled up and gained two crates to open. To me, so far, it actually seems quite reasonable. The crates I opened also gave me rare items, so even though I would get more items with a Premium subscription, the items I was getting were still quite good. You often get in-game "Robits" from crates too, which can be used to purchase weapons or full vehicles. I tested it out, using some of my Robits to purchase a rare long-range weapon, a few more of these and at range I might be unstoppable. I later got a crate that gave me an "Epic" class item too:

In one game, an enemy vehicle was basically a flying cube. It was quite funny seeing it zip across the map, but it was no match for my long range weapon. A quick zoom in and — pow! It's a hit and down it goes. I closed in and finished it off quickly with my quick firing lasers and it was awesome.

I had a lot more fun than I was expecting. The gameplay is intense, fun and seeing all the wild creations people  send into battle was really interesting. So many different types of vehicles, lots of different weapons, it was quite an experience.

I imagine this would be a pretty fun game for a younger audience too. I let my son try a bit and he was so happy with it, laughing away, close to tears he thought his tank that could hover was the funniest thing ever:

It was surprisingly functional too! Could do with a bit more armour, but small steps!

Anyone regularly playing this, what are your thoughts?