BitLiberator - Review (PC)

Combining puzzle, strategy and action? Count me in.

BitLiberator is a top-down strategy-puzzle-action game by PlaceHolder Name Studio.

This is what I like to see, a puzzle game with a bit of a twist. In BitLiberator, you play as a blue ball, a benevolent program, out to reprogram or destroy corrupted programs, which are depicted as red arrows.

To start off with, you do this simply by going near them. Going near them without touching them slowly converts them into one of your programs, which becomes an ally. If you convert two enemies, you can then connect your allies together - which increases their strength and HP. Normally, if a single ally touches a single enemy both are destroyed, but by linking lots of allies up in this way, you can take on bigger groups of enemies.

Enemies can also be linked, and there are only ever a limited amount of them. This means the puzzle element comes into play by working out which enemies to convert, how to prevent them touching you, and working out how to link up your allies without them getting touched before they can get stronger. You can point your allies to move in different directions and get them to follow you to try and manoeuvre their way around the battlefield.

That’s the nuts and bolts of it - and the game can be really challenging. Enemies will start to follow you around, put you in tight corners, and it becomes a game of sticky toffee to evade them. Levels can be over quite quickly, so you need to think quick - luckily you can restart a level as much as you want, so often your strategy will evolve the more you try a level in various ways and the more you die.

The game has a cool computer aesthetic - the background jumps around, with the level names written like code. There are lots of ones and zeroes, and overall it feels a bit like a retro computer title, but with a shinier pixel aesthetic. It also features some techno tunes, lofi enough that you can listen to them over and over without getting bored, but they have enough energy to keep you going.

As the game goes on, you battle larger groups of enemies with bigger waves, and can even get upgrades for your allies which let them shoot amongst other things. There are over 100 levels here, so there’s plenty of content on offer.

One downside though - the game doesn’t support controllers in it’s current form. I can see why it doesn’t, as controlling your allies requires you to click on them with a mouse, and doing this quickly on a controller might be a little difficult. It’s a shame though as I really love to sit back with a puzzle game like this on my Steam Deck during my lunch hour at work, and currently the experience isn’t too great on that device.

There are also really no options to speak of, beyond setting the game to 30 or 60 fps and making it full screen or windowed. That’s fine, I think the game wants to run at a fixed resolution to maintain the pixel aesthetic, but I would have appreciated a 144fps mode.

Overall though, both of those things are really just nit-picks that I’m sure will improve over time as the game gets patched. Honestly, I really like BitLiberator - it’s a fun spin on a puzzle game, and combining strategy with some quick thinking gameplay really makes it a win in my book. It combines tactics with skill, and you’ll never feel better than when you finally beat a tough level.

BitLiberator will be out on Steam on 18th June.

Rating - 4/5