I know how it goes, you’re bored at home, wondering what it is you’re going to do today. Suddenly you see a game that you know nothing about so you consider giving it a go. However, you don’t want to walk in blind, I get it, it’s a scary feeling, but we here at the Robot Republic are here to give you a hand when it comes to Disc Room.
Disc Room is a strange game, and a strange game can be a confusing game. Devolver Digital, a developer known for trying new things, released the game in 2020. The game is an action-puzzle game based around evading spinning buzz saws. So let’s look at what’s here, what you need to know, and how to get ahead in a world of sharp spinning objects.
SURVIVAL IS NOT GUARANTEED
So this is arguably the most important thing for any new player to understand about Disc Room. You. Will. Not. Survive. Now, this might sound like some overestimation of the difficulty, but it isn’t. There is no way to survive through the rooms, that isn’t the point. The main goal is to survive AS LONG as you can.
Each room has a timer on it, as well as a leaderboard, and this will normally (more on this later) raise continuously. However, advancing isn’t just about surviving. The main goal of the game is to unlock other rooms in the facility and the way to do this varies. If you look on the screen while playing you will see a small, colour-coded, list in the corner. These objectives each relate to one of the doors of the room you are in. When you complete one of these objectives you unlock one of the doors.
This seems simple enough but it should be said that some of these are not possible to do in one room or from the start. For instance, some objectives require the player to be killed by a variety of discs, more than are in the room. As such players need to go to other rooms to complete this one objective. A trick with this is to look at the room before you activate it. There are symbols for the number of disc types and if you have been killed by them.
THERE’S MORE TO DISC DODGING THAN…DODGING?
While Disc Room initially starts with simply moving out of the way of the discs, it soon becomes somewhat more complicated. There are a variety of discs and each one has its quirks and tricks that need to be taken into consideration while trying to avoid them.
Initially, the discs simply move and bounce, but soon they’ll be as varied as exploding into segments or creating time-warping bubbles. The truth of the matter is that it is difficult to keep track of all the different kinds. Thankfully, newer discs will usually be in the initial salvo so it’s easy to see what they can do.
There are also more threats to the player than the discs and each of the rooms has a gimmick. For instance, in some of the rooms, you enter you will see that the centre of the room has a circle. At first, this won’t mean anything but suddenly you’ll notice that the timer isn’t always rising. This is the first trick room you’ll enter and it is only the beginning. You see, you need to stay in the circle for the timer to rise. However, if players are aiming to get higher times then they’ll need to focus more on their survival than just staying in the circle.
Finally, there are boss discs that require the player to take out the main disc. Finding little golden drops and avoiding the attacks of the disc usually do this. This can vary, however, but the process is always the same. Watch how the disc moves, explore your environment and be prepared to die a few times. However, these little golden drops offer more than just a method to kill the boss.
DUCK DIP DODGE AND…SLOW DOWN TIME
So here’s the thing, a game that was just about dodging saw blades would get dull pretty fast. Disc Room knows this, and avoids it by giving players a few special abilities. Encountering new discs and collecting the small golden drops unlock these abilities. It needs to be mentioned that you can only use one ability at a time. This means that players need to pick their favourites and the ones they are most comfortable with, rather than the ones they just unlocked.
These abilities have several functions, but many of them have a negative as well as a positive. For instance, the slow-down time ability appears to be the best way to stay alive and increase the timing. However, when using the time-slowing effect the timer stops, meaning that increased survivability comes at a cost. What this boils down to is that you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of each ability to get the best use of them.
Disc Room appears as a simple game at the start, and one with little to offer players. However, there is more here than meets the eye and there are a few tricks to getting the best scores. Hopefully, these tips and tricks will be able to help you survive and beat the developer's times because that is the main focus, isn’t it?
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