Mayan Death Robots is a game derived from passion, immaturity and fun couch-play ideals. Built on a small but powerful genre, Mayan Death Robots follows the examples of Tanks and Worms, but brings unique features and style.
Like the aforementioned titles, much of this turn-based game is about choosing the proper weapons and angle for a proper attack. The premise of Mayan Death Robots is that in the future, people enjoy watching robots fighting about Mayan Temples for sport, which would also explain the whole Mayan God belief system. In these fights the rules are simple, destroy the other bot’s power core, which is often hidden below the bots themselves within Mayan structures. Each robot has an array of unique abilities to duke it out with the other. Among these are diggers, building blocks, jumping, nukes, lightning and missiles. All attacks are extremely satisfying if you land them. These robots come in a number of different varieties, so it’s pretty easy to find one you’ll like.
Mayan Death Robots is specifically designed for multiplayer play, specifically on the same screen. This creates for challenging and enjoyable gameplay. Players can decide to target each other’s bot and get them out of the way for a moment, or go straight for the core. The only downside to this is that the game has been designed only for multiplayer play. There is no solo option. This, coupled with various control issues, takes the game back a few steps. The controls are quite honestly, horrendous. For starters, Mayan Death Robots throws the standard ‘WASD’ control scheme to the side in favor of ‘ESDF’, which can be extremely difficult to get used to, although the 2nd player’s arrow key controls make sense. The select and ‘go back’ commands are assigned to the CTRL and shift, and 0 and 1 keys, and at times the space key. Aside from the fact that almost none of the commands or menu options have button prompts, in-game they cause for a lot of issues and confusion.
Mayan Death Robots is a simple, yet unique take on the Tanks genre that employs both complex and intuitive systems in its multiplayer combat. However, unintuitive and sloppy controls, mandatory multiplayer and and overly complex menu system mar this otherwise stellar game.
