Games worth discovering

More of a quirky tool than a game – Retro Gadgets Quick Review

12K View2022-12-01

Evil Licorice’s first game, Retro Gadgets, isn’t really a game at all; it’s a gadget-creation tool that lets players make, code, and customize their own gadgets and share them with like-minded internet folk.

In Retro Gadgets, players make and modify their own gadgets, which they can code to bring to life before sharing with the community. Working in a tactile interface, tinkerers can press buttons, flick switches, twist dials, and move joysticks to build and interact with any gadget they can dream up. The game features full Steam Workshop integration, letting players download, inspect, and reverse engineer other people’s projects to create their own versions.

Retro Gadgets can also be utilized as an educational tool that lets players create their gadgets with full support for Lua code, including a documented editor. This enables gadgets to actually “work” in a virtual sense, from video game consoles to live weather stations and calculators. Once built, creators can use their gadgets on their desktops while running Retro Gadgets. In the future, players and designers will be able to export their projects and use them individually as widgets on their Windows computers.

PLATFORMS

Retro Gadgets is only on PC, and it ran perfectly fine on my system.

TIME PLAYED

I played Retro Gadgets for about two-and-half hours and that was more than enough time to create my own ridiculous, non-functional gadget, Prince’s Funk-o-Tron 4000, and tinker around with all the demo gadgets and community uploaded gadgets as well.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Surprisingly engaging. For someone like myself who isn’t all that technically-minded, I found myself getting into what Retro Gadgets was offering quite easily. In fact, there were many times when I would find a new wrinkle that I could mess with or try one of the other gadgets and smile while saying, “Oh... Well, isn’t that interesting.”

• It reminds me of the Koala Pad. The first computerized tool I owned was the Koala Pad for the Commodore 64. It was basically a primitive touch tablet packaged with an art program that allowed you to create color digital art in your home. This was a big deal in 1984. Trust me. And Retro Gadgets gave me that same cool, exploratory vibe as the Koala Pad did thirty-plus years ago when I first started poking around to see what I could do with it.

• Copious documentation. Although it has just been officially released today, Retro Gadgets already has a good amount of video and written documentation for early adopters to dive into, and that’s always a good thing so all those that aren’t so tech savvy can play catch up.

WHAT SUCKS

• It isn’t a game. If this isn’t clear by now, Retro Gadgets isn’t a video game, per se. It’s more of a cool utility or tool wrapped in a video game veneer. It’ll allow you to make your own simple games akin to Simon or Snake... but that’s going to take some work, and if you aren’t down with that, then Retro Gadgets isn’t for you.

SHOULD YOU PLAY IT?

If you’re the kind of person who digs building things or spends hours on massive Lego sets and watching people tear down then rebuild tech stuff on YouTube, then Retro Gadgets is definitely the experience for you. While I found it intriguing for sure, it’s not the kind of “game” I would buy and really wouldn’t have even touched it if it wasn’t for review purposes, but I must say that I was more engaged than I thought I would be. I can see a person with the right mindset and technical prowess getting lost in Retro Gadgets for hours and hours on end.