2011's BEEP had a habit of showing up on the Steam store for me. Though it was not until last year when I finally caved and purchased it on sale. Or possibly the year before that... Either way, it has been unplayed for a while now.

On this cold 1st of July day, I installed it and... Played for just over an hour. Not much to stay or say with this one.

Story wise, you are part of a robot fleet with a shared mind. So if you die, and you likely will, you respawn as another robot. This is used to explain the way that collectables have vanished from the map due to the previous robot already collecting them.

As far as I could tell, there are unlimited replacements, with a death counter displaying on the star system map.

The aim is to visit each point on a planet and collect enough Anti-Matter McGuffins to move on (re: unlock) the other planets. There are four Anti-Matter's to collect on each map. Three can be collected by grabbing a large nugget, one must be collected by finding all the smaller nuggets.

The first few maps are easy. As one of these screenshots shows, it is in plain sight, and you just need to Freeman your way with a gravity gun to pull it to your chassis.

As the game progresses, these larger nuggets are harder to collect. Often requiring solving a smaller physics puzzle, or blocking enemy lasers so you can pass. These can require some backtracking, and if you drop the item you are moving to block it, tough luck. Restart the map and try again.

This can be both rewarding and frustrating. One early puzzle involved a cave with a laser blocking off a little end segment. If you jump into the laser, you suffer minor damage but the stun effect knocks you into the pit, forcing a restart.

My next thought was to drag a enemy robot corpse and hold it above me to block the laser while I jumped to the anti-matter, no such luck there. But there are floaty robots, and these will float and block the laser once placed right next to it. Ta-da! Anti-matter!

It is also frustrating as the physics in this game can sometimes feel really wonky.

Most times it feels as if your robot has good traction. Beep can even lean over some edges and hold on enough for you to shoot bullets to take out enemy robots or lasers, and even use its gravity gun.

And sometimes Beep goes flying. Somehow picking up enough momentum to push it two screens away. No doubt into a pit, robot, or bomb. And if it is a bomb, it understandable throws you across the map.

There's also the issue of item placement and mass. While stacking a tower of blocks and robot corpses to get to areas with anti-matter nuggets can be fun in a physics game way. Everything but blocks fixed to a limited slider feels like it has the same mass. And rotating things to be level and not fall down is too challenging. The store promo page states that this is a "hardcore platformer", I'm going to disagree. It's not. What it is, is a protagonist more terrible than boxbot.

Eh. Some people liked this one. For me the progression and slightly off physics didn't allow me to enjoy it. Might be something here if you enjoy or tolerate that.

Game Acquisition: On sale (2017ish)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 1 July 2018
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8
Processor: 2.2Ghz Dual-Core
Memory: 2 GB
Hard Disk Space: 512 MB
Video Card: OpenGL 2.0 drivers on GeForce 8 series or Radeon HD series (or better)