Every robot has his day… even if that day is only an hour long.

One could argue all day long about similarities between the video game business and the film business. No doubt there is a graph somewhere showing the exponential growth in the budget of a AAA game title compared with the shockingly profligate practices in film production. Another point of comparison might be the inventiveness and prolificacy of both industries’ independent producers. For every Michael Bay whopper there is a score of modest little films out there that cost in their entirety what a Bay film spent on coffee. Likewise, scampering about in the giant shadow cast by Call of Duty, you’ll find indie titles like Frima Studios’ Widgets Odyssey I fighting for the spare change in gamers’ pockets. This summer, the Quebec City-based developer is offering this low-cost, low-calorie puzzle-platformer as an alternative to the marquee brands choking your Gamefly queue.

Widgets Odyssey I is a modest game by any metric. It’s short, simple in construction, and spare in presentation. You control the crew of the S-Pace, five robot escapees from a galactic junkyard where the evil Yagor is collecting machinery to construct a giant weapon that will help him seize control of a galaxy or two. Each robot has slightly different movement abilities and melee attacks. Spad, the ill-tempered captain of the S-Pace, has a jump and a melee kick; Monk the engineer has a shorter jump and a fist slam; Bruce has a short jump — supplemented by ramps on his level — and a melee punch; Cosmo, as the physical head portion of the larger robot Helmut, has no attack but does have rocket jets that allow him to boost high and far; Helmut has a very short jump but can throw Cosmo once they are united on their level for the only actual ranged attack in the game.

The game itself consists of four stages, each featuring a different robot (Cosmo and Helmut count as one), and presented as episodes that are tailored to highlight the abilities of each. Since the game throws you in with nothing more than a button map explaining the controls, you can count on repeating the episodes a few times while you work out the puzzles thanks to a countdown timer in the form of a “drenalin” meter that depletes by a combination of elapsed time and damage taken. Once you’ve cottoned on to the steps necessary to beat a level, it doesn’t take long to finish. You are awarded a score at the end of each episode — an aggregate of drenalin collected from the map and defeated enemies, as well as that left in your drenalin meter — to encourage replay for better scores.

That each episode is devoted to one robot customized to make use of that robot’s individual characteristics is a good thing, but the whole feels like a collection of tutorial levels for a larger game. Just when you feel comfortable with the characters and are ready for a bigger challenge, the game presents you with an ill-fitting mini-game and then you’re done. You could argue that at the game’s $1.99 price point on PSN one shouldn’t necessarily expect more. You could also argue that with a second chapter already available, there is more game to be had for another two bucks. But all that aside, there is no getting around the fact that the game felt half as long as it should have been. Combine that with two game-breaking bugs that forced restarts and the aforementioned mini-game that felt like an afterthought and you come away with the feeling of an incomplete experience teasing you with the potential of a good time.

Widgets Odyssey I has some things going for it. The art and animation are polished and in lockstep with the Flash look so in vogue on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. The levels are designed well and offer a surprising amount of variation considering the length of the game. What there is of a story is meager, which is disappointing since one of the few things indies can actually do to add value at relatively low cost is offer a compelling, or at least fun, story. It’s hard to complain about things at this price point, but the least a gamer can expect for any amount of money is a complete product that leaves a satisfied feeling when the credits roll. Widgets Odyssey I comes up short of the mark on that count.

ComicsOnline rates Widgets Odyssey I 2 ½ renegade robots out of 5.

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