Mechabellum review: impeccably designed and maniacally moreish mech strategy

While Mechabellum’s disparate roster of roast ’em riddle ‘em robots might initially seem to lack the characterful coherence of a writhing Zerg ecosystem or ancient Greek phalanx, this strategy autobattler’s array of lumbering tanks, hulking automata, and zippy fliers do share a common thread: each one of them has the potential to be either the most terrifying nuisance on the field, or to instantly crumble like a soggy strudel in an angry washing machine. With each mech able to become another mech’s worse nightmare, it becomes a game about stretching tight budgets to balance reactive counters with devastating offensives; about identifying the butterfly wings that can send tornados through your opponent’s ranks. It’s about the moments that eat up the hours like nothing else.

Mechabellum is not the first autobattler or autochess of its type, and these aren’t really RTS. But, by doing away with that genre’s demands for reaction timing, uberclicks per dinosecond, and similar skill concerns that make my wrist and face ache before I’ve even left the tutorial of most traditional RTS, Mechabellum feels as if its let me enjoy my imagined thrills of an entire genre that it doesn’t even really belong to. More than a genre, even. I don’t play competitive multiplayer games, ever. I’ve played nothing but 1v1 matches here, despite available co-op and single player modes, and I’ve loved every one. Mechabellum feels tense and fiery even while easygoing; instantly accessible and temptingly solvable, even in the face of its oubliette-tudinous depth.

Let’s talk about robots though. Let me reach across the gingham tablecloth, slap your china teacup from your hands mere millimetres from your parched and expectant lips, and scream the word ‘robots’ in your face until I’m hoarse. Etymologically derived from ‘robota’ – a word for ‘servitude’ or ‘forced labour’ in old Slavonic – the robot is a servant by nature. In Rossum’s Universal Robots – the Czech play in which modernity’s conception of the clanker was first conceived – the robots eventually stage a worker’s rebellion, breaking free on their confines, and also learning how to shag somehow. Not Mechabellum’s robots. They can neither shag nor shed themselves of their pre-destined role on the battlefield. This is good: In many ways, Mechabellum is a game made out of constraints.

Hurtling chance might sometimes offer up a turn where you can do everything you want, but usually, you’re watching one stretched, imperfect round play out while mentally queuing up priorities for the next. Very quickly, if this is your first autobattler, as it was for me: both you and your opponent have what’s effectively a HP score. Your HP: gorgeous. Perfect. Their HP: a disgusting abomination. Get rid of it. Kill all your foe’s units in a round, and you’ll knock off some life corresponding to how many of your mechs you’ve got left on the field. With the exception of one limited ability I’ve never used, you can’t give your bots orders. They’ll move forward, and fight whatever’s in their path. Place units. Upgrade. Use abilities like shields or missiles. Then, when you and your opponent are ready, you watch those decisions play out.

The positions of previously placed units stay the same from round to round, but the current planning phase is hidden. Triumphant skirmishes where you previously watched your rockbots smash enemy scissorbots to bits are now devastating losses as your foe’s newly placed paperbots make short work of your rockbots, creating a new opening for those reprobate scissorbots to get right into your backline. That’s where your command structures live! If they get destroyed, all your units are slowed and made vulnerable.

And so it’s about making those contraints work for you. Supplies are the first. You’re given exponentially more to spend each round, but it’s never enough. You get one upgrade, special ability, or bonus unit, then you can place two bots. Higher tiers of units need to be unlocked with supplies before paying again to recruit them. You can then place them anywhere on your side of the field. Starting on turn two, you can also place them on your opponent’s flanks, but they take time to spawn in, during which they’re extremely vulnerable.

You can also spend supplies on permanent or temporary upgrades. A shield dome will nullify incoming attacks over a chosen area until it’s worn down. A missile might take a big chunk of your foe’s weaker chaff if placed cannily. A seemingly piddly 12% attack power bonus might be just be the crest that swells your wave to the proportions needed to smother your opponent’s. When you’ve got a better sense of just how far to stretch those supplies to make riskier plays, you might want to pay extra to recruit a third unit. Or take bonus supplies this turn to pay them back with interest the next. Or even recruit higher ranked versions of standard mechs, skipping the need to get them kill experience on the field and paying to level them up.

Or you might want to grant new abilities to the units you already have, expanding their utility and opening up whole new approaches, altering the state of play in an instant. Maybe your opponent has a line of Stormcallers – a long range but immobile missile launcher with such destructive power that several of them can delete entire armies. That’s when you look to the humble Mustang. Spend the requisite funds, and each of your Mustangs – usually meant for munching through swarms – can now shoot those missiles out of the sky. Or maybe you want your sniper Marksman to spawn a unit of tiny Fangs when the battle starts, perfect for screening enemy shots. Or maybe you’d like your Steel Ball’s searing lasters to also restore their health as they fire, bulwarking up vulnerable battle lines. It makes each match feel incredibly distinct – especially when you pop into the workshop between games and start theorycrafting some nasty synergies.

If I’m conveying anything here, I hope it’s how deftly Mechabellum draws wonderful asymmetry from an initially symmetrical set of choices – ensuring you know your opponent’s capabilities while still having such a wide array of options that you’ve always got a response. And it’s that readability – effectively perfect information – that allows for such wonderfully dramatic moments. When you know what each mech does, it’s that much more thrilling to engineer situations where they make the most out of their capabilities, whether that be through spacing, timing, or just the hardest of hard counters.

But it’s truest joys lie in wanton destruction; so unbelievably tactile for a game in which not a single shell casing is spent without minutes between the locked-in trigger pull and muzzle flare’s crescendo. Watching for weak spots, applying the thriftiest dash of pressure without overextending, and watching entire flanks crumble as several rounds of planning pay off – planning that might just have looked like panicked flailing to your opponent. Having the merest snack-sized premonition of a hunch vindicated as you scry the patterns in your foe’s placement, and having already answered their plan with a hearty “not today, fucko” before they’ve even got close to pulling it off.

The cherry on top is how Mechabellum is so very crunchy and rules-based that it easily could have gotten away with much more basic presentation. Instead, dust clouds, searing lasers and glorious explosions herald every victory. Each of its 26 units roll and stomp and wriggle and writhe in vibrant mechanised motion, and audio design belts out catastrophic requiems for each scrapped mech to pierce through the already cinematic score. It is the clattering, cacophonic sound of two giant god mechs punching each other in the face forever, lending so much delicious drama to every decision.

Twice this year I’ve felt such a strong need to support a game that I’ve bought a copy for a friend as soon as I’d finished my review copy. Alongside Tactical Breach Wizards, Mechabellum is the best fifteen quid I’ve spent all year. At this rate, it’ll still be best fifteen quid I’ve spent next year too. It’s sometimes hard to tell if my love for Mechabellum comes from its place as an entry point to a genre I always would have loved, but I strongly suspect it’s simply because this is such an thoughtfully constructed and impeccably designed bit of strategy. I’d call it loving, almost, if it wasn’t so incredibly cuthroat that I almost feel guilty each time I do what mechs do best: stomp another opponent into dust with little more than a single, well-considered click.