Thank you Excalibur for sending us this game to review!

Circuit Breakers doesn’t have much of a story, but some of the loading screen texts elude to the robots stealing some crystals that probably belonged to the characters.  Either way, if you see robots moving in this game, it’s your job to put them out of commission in this top down shooter.  There are swarms of robots and you have to survive long enough to make a safe exit and head into the next room with even more robots waiting for you.

There are different types of robots including ones that swarm, rush, or shoot back at you.  To counterattack, the heroes have unique weapons that can give them the upper hand.  Aldo uses a machine gun that is fast and good for short-range attacks.  Shelby has a powerful, but slower shot gun.  Samson is equipped with a slow, but devastating missile launcher.  Tay has a laser attack that can shoot long-range enemies. 

Besides robots, there are crates and cargo trains that can be blown to bits.  Each item destroyed will leave behind energerium which will level up the character’s weapons as long as they have a steady flow of it.  If a player doesn’t collect enough energerium to maintain the weapon’s current level, it will begin to level down to its previous state.  The upgraded weapons are super effective and worth striving for.

There are numerous hidden achievements for each of the characters to unlock.  Some of the challenges including exterminating a certain number of robots or collecting a vast amount of energerium.  Steam achievements are available as well but they will take some time to unlock with their tough requirements.  The biggest killing streak I have achieved to date is two hundred which is quite a bit less than the five hundred the Steam achievement demands.  I also have not defeated twenty-five bosses yet. 

When playing solo, you only have three lives with three hit points apiece.  Fortunately, healing kits are fairly common and often needed.   While playing co-op multiplayer the lives are unlimited as long as somebody in the party is still alive.  There’s a ten second respawn delay and much can happen in those ten seconds!

Currently, Circuit Breakers fully supports local multiplayer and players can join in as long as the controllers are enabled before the game is launched.  We found out the hard way that plugging in a controller mid-game does not work.  Multiplayer is a blast and is hands down better than playing solo.  Online multiplayer is available, but is considered to be in a beta state and the game warns about possible crashes.  While I have not experienced any crashes, I wasn’t able to find anyone online to play against.  

If you have friends to play alongside, I highly recommend looking into Circuit Breakers if you like old school shoot ‘em up games.  The graphics and sound effects won’t blow you away, but the game play is fun and suitable for people of all ages.  There’s no blood or gore, just explosions from blowing up robots.  My kids and I enjoyed playing together and we look forward to more hectic battles ahead.   The game retails for a reasonable $9.99, but I have seen it for less than $4.00 on Steam.