UPDATED, now that I've "completed" the game
JunkerBot is an intriguing indie game with a pretty simple premise: car combat, without the chase, the checkpoints, the smashing... It's strictly weapons, from simple autocannons to mortars and "land torpedoes" and more. The action is indeed fast and furious, and there are some depth to the game, as successful combat and "decontamination" of of the area unlocks additional vehicles. However, the upgrade interface seems a bit weird, and the base construction interface needs to be better explained to make sense.
The story is simple enough: a bunch of probes were dropped to decontaminate the planet from something. After the probe was deployed, it was out of power, and before it can deploy a solar panel and recharge, storm hit, and it was blown over, and bured in sand. Unknown amount of time later, sand blew away, and the probe woke up, and proceed to scan, dematerialize/recycle stuff, and built itself a basic vehicle, and recycled the initial probe body for storage. After getting away from the bad guys, which just showed up, it was able to find a spot and deploy a "headquarters", which becomes your base.
Your base has a HQ area, and you'll need to deploy power and resources to keep the base running. You'll also need a TON of storage. You start with a "basic vehicle". Build a "replicator" to get more advanced vehicles. You need certain amount of power around the replicator to power it, Fortunately, you can move the modules around. NOTE: You need to have the solar panels NEXT to the replicator (in the 4 compass directions for it to count. When you replicate larger vehicles, you'll need Solar 2.0 (+4 power) and 3.0 (+8 power) but you need special resources to build them.
There are 3 resources in this game: metal (green), fuel (orange), and hydrogen/water (blue). The basic "1.0" vehicles don't need fuel, but the more advanced 2.0 and 3.0 vehicles do. While you can capture thousands of units of resources by taking out a base, later, when you fight large groups of enemies, you can capture 2000+ units of metal in one battle if you end up taking out 8-9 enemies. You produce fuel by making a "refinery" and process metal and water. And you'll need a LOT of metal and water to make fuel. Some of the more advanced base modules and vehicles requires THOUSANDS of units in fuel.
Your base is also doing "research" that gives you upgrades, like a larger base perimeter (instead of 4x4, you have a 5x5 base instead) or new modules, and so on. There's even "arty module" that will "shoot" you repair packs (you need to build them), or even another vehicle. But those will cost resources that you may not have. You can also accelertate research by converting extra resources to research points, but I don't personally recommend doing that.
Any way, you travel in "real-time", but in overhead view, where you right click on a spot you want to go. (Or you can WASD your way too) Press space to zoom out and see all the enemy bases and whatnot. When enemy vehicles gets near you, you go into combat mode.
The different vehicles that you unlock have different weapons and thus different tactics altogether. Your starter "basic vehicle" is bulky, but has a 360 degree turret. The "attacker", almost like a cigar, has 2 front guns and a rear gun, so it requires a very different attack style if you replicate it. A "light bomber" is equipped with a short-range mortar that can hit you even when it's not facing you, but if you keep moving it's not that serious. An "attacker" is equipped with a "land torpedo" which seeks, but requires a manual detonation, so it's basically a short-range weapon useful against a bunch of enemies, but it seems to randomly veer off, so it doesn't "seek" much, and it has rear armor plate! Then there's the bomber, which has FOUR side armor plates, and TWO mortars in addition to the regular guns. But it's also a huge target. So each of these vehicles require a very different tactics. The fighter obviously requires slashing hit and runs, bombers cicle, attacker gets close. There are some uber-vehicles that requrie a ton of resources bo build, but they are VERY powerful indeed.
The AI is decent, as they don't make too many stupid moves, but they do ENOUGH of it to give you a chance. Dropping shots in front of the enemies are not hard, but circle-strafing can be difficult. Your vehicles have aux thrusters to give a short burst of speed, but the basic version has VERY short duration and thus are not really "turbo" or "nitro" per se. The effect seems to barely last half a second.
If you got enough H, and you got the teleporter wired up correctly, you can call in special help durign the fight. If you got your teleporter wired up to 16 units of power, you can call in kamikaze mini-cars If you got 32 units of power, you can call in stationary turrets. I personally found those to be way too gimmick-y because I was able to build one of the uber-vehicles (end-game "research") and have no need for the little things.
If you built the teleporter, you can also build a "portable gate" with you, so you can return to base via the gate, rather than be forced to drive all the way back.
To unlock the next crater, you need to defeat the enemy base, which is mounted on stilts. You need to destroy all four stilts, while you're under fire from the base's mortars, AND several enemy vehicles.
Some of the bosses require other tactics, as the auto-turret doesn't always want to lock-on to them right.
You can jump back to base as long as you're not in combat, but there's a chance to encounter enemies on the way, unless you spent some resources. But if you have the portable gate deployed you can skip that and go straight home.
Graphics are pretty low-key, and runs on old machines pretty well. I can crank it up to almost 1080p, but not quite. There are 3 quality settings, but no optional frame counter.
Once you "finished" the first cluster, you get to clear the craters again, when enemies came back and took over all except 1 crater. Now enemies will raid your HQ (unless you beat them off, then decontaminate it until it reads 0%). You then engaged in artillery duel against the enemy units. If you are elsewhere at the time, go home, as each enemy hit takes resources from your storage.
So what do I like about this game?
* Simple yet effective combat
* The factions of enemies do look different and act different
* Resource management is rather unique
So what do I NOT like about this game?
* Unclear background. The factions have names, but were never mentioned.
* Unclear instructions. Some of the base modules are unexplained. You have to do trial and error. For example, the H-plant can be turned on/off in order to save fuel. You have to turn it on to make it work. Also, what exactly is the "
* End player vehicle too powerful
All in all, pretty good, and good value for the sale price.
