Technology and AI are being relied on more and more in our society, which lends more credence to the fear many have of them one day taking over. This has been a theme used across many mediums over the years such as The Terminator series, but developer CATASTROPHIC_OVERLOAD decided to take on the idea with a little more light-hearted approach in Bish Bash Bots. Ahead of the October release of the game, we had the opportunity to go hands-on with Bish Bash Bots to see if we could fight back against the renegade robots.

Tower Defense With A Twist

The world in Bish Bash Bots became so advanced that humans no longer had to work, and instead were able to relax while robots handled everything. That was at least until an uprising that turned the robots against the humans and the robots started stealing everything. The robots made one major mistake though, attacking a science fair where the game’s four playable characters were participating. This leads to the foursome having to use their own tech that they have created to fight back, which allows them to escape as a group to their flying Aerovan. The story intro is a bit long-winded for a game like this, but it is skippable for those who would rather just get straight into the action.

Bish Bash Bots is an up to four-player co-op game that is split into multiple worlds of four stages, with each stage having to be beaten to move onward. The game does a good job of starting off pretty simple to ease you into the game and its mechanics. As with most tower defense games, one of the keys to survival is to build a variety of different turrets to take down enemy forces before they can reach your base, in this case, an EMP device that is charging the entire match. Once the EMP reaches 100%, you have to go to it and smash a button to activate it and end the match instantly.

Bish Bash Bots’ four playable characters play the exact same except for their special moves. For instance, Annika’s special move allows you to upgrade faster when it is active while Sol’s makes you hit harder when it is active. I personally found Annika’s faster upgrade ability to be one of the most useful, as upgraded turrets can really turn the tide in a mission sometimes.

Surveying each mission’s map setup and finding out where to place turrets is going to be step number one in every stage. I learned very quickly that it sometimes takes a few restarts of a level to really figure out the best way to strategize, as the maps often have multiple pathways that enemies can enter and you do not know those patterns to start. Thankfully, the patterns are pre-determined rather than being a roguelike, which means you can prepare your forces for the barrage of incoming robots. While it is easy to restart a mission, I wish it was more obvious where the first enemies are coming from so that you wouldn’t have to continually feel the need to restart until you get a feel for that specific mission.

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You are not able to place infinite turrets though, as you are limited in the number of scraps that you have available to build them. You have a set number to start each match and will earn more as you defeat more robots. The amount of scraps being dropped dwindles the longer into a match you get, so you have to be careful to conserve the scraps.

Playing more stages unlock additional turret types as well, some of which are vital to your success in battle. The first two you have access to are the Blaster and Cannon, which can both take down ground forces. However, some stages will require you to utilize the Anti-Air turret and then later others like the Thumper and such to fight specific types of enemies. There are many stages that will be outright impossible to beat if you do not use these, so figuring out how to manage your scraps and the various turret types is very important.

As aforementioned, upgrading turrets is very important if you want to beat some of the more difficult stages. By bashing the turret with your weapon, you can gradually upgrade it until it is maxed out. There will also be upgrade packs that some robots drop that you can throw onto a turret to get a much larger upgrade boost than hitting it would do. Figuring out when are good time to focus on upgrades and which turrets to upgrade adds a lot of strategy to the game.

Not only are you able to attack the enemy bots with a variety of turrets, but one of the unique twists in Bish Bash Bots is that you can take matters into your own hands and fight the bots as well. I learned very quickly that you do minimal damage compared to the turrets, but more than anything your character can be used for crowd control. When bots aren’t quite getting in range of your turrets or are rushing down a pathway too quickly, you can go and bash away to try and place them in a better position. Another very useful tactic is to knock robots into holes that are found in some stages to knock them out immediately. One problem I found myself having more than I would have liked was falling in these holes myself even when it didn’t look like they should be falling in the hole, which forced me to tread even more carefully when around them.

Your character also has an equippable gadget in their arsenal that they can pull out at certain times during the match before having to wait for a cooldown before using it again. These vary in how useful they can really be, with one of my favorites being the Shock Hammer that freezes enemies in place for a few seconds. I honestly didn’t find myself using the gadgets too much, but they are nice to use sparingly during a mission.

Some stages also have special setups that you have to work around, such as having mushrooms that you must destroy before playing turrets or a sandstorm popping up that switches the stage up entirely a few times during a match. The developers definitely were creative with these to try and keep the game fresh, but they almost felt like they were glossed over too quickly as the game moved on to the next type of stage hazard.

The Aerovan is your character’s home base between stages where you will do all of your character customization. The only real physical player customization that you can do is to equip various unlockable cosmetic hats, which are unlocked by completing in-game challenges. I was really hoping for more levels of customization related to unlocks, but this still does the job well enough. You also have the ability to select which gadget you would like your character to equip ahead of the battle, with more being unlocked the more you play the game. One of the game’s only frustrating aspects, in the preview state at least, is that the game does not remember which cosmetic or gadget you had equipped the last time you played, so you will always have to go in and set them with every play session.

Adding to the possible fun in the game is the ability to play with up to four players locally or online in co-op. We were only able to experience the single-player side of the game, but I can definitely imagine adding more players can bring even more chaos than that which already exists in each mission.

Take Down The Bots

Bish Bash Bots is a fairly basic tower defense game that gives you a little more control over the outcome than many others in the genre. Not only do you build hordes of turrets to mow down enemies, but you also get to go in and smash the opposition hands-on, albeit more for crowd control than doing massive damage to them. The game also introduces new mechanics to keep the game fairly fresh from what we saw, though I definitely wish some of the more unique ideas got more time to breathe before moving on to the next.

From what we were able to play, Bish Bash Bots is shaping up to be a solid tower defense game that tries to mix in a few more hands-on elements to keep the player invested throughout each mission. Hopefully, the development team is working to polish some of the minimal issues and will allow for a smooth launch when it releases very soon.

MP1st was given access to a preview build of Bish Bash Bots for our hands-on session. Bish Bash Bots launches on October 19 for PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.