Marionation Gear ★★★★☆

Super fun little thing. Dozens of different mechs to pilot each with their own unique little toy control schemes on the touchscreen. Some more practical and straightforward, others more silly and gimmicky. Cars with a steering wheel and gear stick; missiles with their own multi-step launch sequences; a revolver where you have to load each individual bullet, pull back the firing pin, then pull the trigger; a steam-powered robot that is a beast in close combat but must be powered by pulling a lever to open the furnace doors, shoveling in coal, building steam pressure and then finally turning a valve to let the pressure out and power the arms (and don’t forget to close it again to build the pressure up for the next round).

Less endearingly the power creep throughout the game means that fun puppets you get early on are going to mostly stop being useful as you progress through the game and filling out your roster with upgraded versions takes a lot of replaying and grinding out levels, both to earn cash and also to get blueprints that drop randomly from specific missions. There’s also nothing in-game to indicate which missions provide which blueprints either so if you want something specific you’ll need to consult a guide. Late-game missions also become a chore with long slogs fighting waves of enemies that can, and often will, juggle you to death if they manage to knock you over once. And when there are too many robots in a level the frame rate really suffers. Even just trying to find where the next mission unlocked on the world map becomes a pain over time as it turns into a sprawling mess.

With regards to story, tone and presentation the game reminds me a bit of Advance Wars, with this seemingly quite small world culturally dominated by marionation gear¹—the game’s puppet mechs—the strongest of which of course end up piloted by a bunch of thirteen year olds to save the world from the horrors of traditional artisanal work being replaced by soulless automation and mechanised warfare.