Drone The Game
Review

Drone The Game (2020) is a shooting battle with a highly controllable drone against other online players in arenas like maps. It's unusual because you build and customize your drone by dragging and dropping functional blocks that affect how the drone will fly. This is paired with a high-skill piloting challenge where players must practice to work with their honed craft and the games realistic physics.

The drone building is extensive and must be carefully balanced. Design will determine whether it can run, jump, fly, hover and so on. The parts all have different strengths and weaknesses, these are based on the weight, durability, power consumption, heat and noise production of the part. Currently the game offers mainly flying vehicles, and will expand into other areas.

You compete in a range of modes: Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Racing, Powerball. Each has different objectives to win and require different strategies. There are many environments" Earth, Desert, Ice, Oceanic, Lava, Gas and asteroid planets that have unique terrains and weather conditions. You can create your own arenas with unique appearance, environments, gravity, game mode and geography. These can then be publish for others to play with and experience the arena you created.

The mechanics of flying the drones is nuanced and unique. Whether learning how to quickly manoeuvre or take on barrel rolls, swivels or dives, practice is essential. This lends the game to esports competition in a similar way to Rocket League's mechanics.

Drone The Game not currently on Xbox or PlayStation but hope to come to those platforms in a year or so.

Our examiner, Thom Robertson, first checked Drone The Game 3 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 2 years ago.