Retronika on Quest 3 made my hoverbike dreams come true

Image: 4Players-Studio

Buckle up. Retronika is a hoverbike VR game that combines shooter and racing elements. Read on for our review.

You have fallen into a wormhole and are stranded on the planet Retronika. Unfortunately, only robots live here, and they have a strong dislike for the human species. With the help of your trusty robo-companion, you hop on a hoverbike and complete missions to earn money and find a way and portal out of this planet.

Retronika: Review in a nutshell

Retronika offers a campaign of 50 missions in which you must fly predetermined routes under time pressure and shoot down flying drones and other robots.

As you progress, you will learn more about the planet and gradually upgrade your hoverbike and blasters. Both upgrades are necessary to complete the increasingly difficult missions.

In addition to the campaign, there is an action-packed endless mode and a freestyle mode where you can set parameters for your own hoverbike tour.

• Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
• Tested on: Meta Quest 3
• Available on: Meta Quest 3, 3S, 2 and Pro

Hoverbike riding needs to be learned

Retronika is a cross between a racing game and a shooter. You navigate in three dimensions on a given linear route and have to avoid the sometimes dense air traffic. There is no free exploration of the city.

In most missions, you will encounter drones and other unfriendly robots that will attack you. You can defend yourself against these attacks with your blasters.

Your hoverbike and its armor are powered by the same energy source as your blasters. Your projectiles and enemy hits consume this resource. When it is completely depleted, you fail the mission. Luckily, robots you shoot down will replenish your energy and keep your hoverbike running.

The controls are cleverly designed. If you hold the handlebars with both hands, you can steer up and down. If you keep one hand on the handlebars while shooting enemies with the other, the hoverbike stays at the same height, and you can only steer left and right. This reduces complexity, as dodging vehicles and shooting robots from the sky at the same time is a challenging task.

Retronika is a game that takes practice. Even after two hours of playing, I still found it occasionally difficult to navigate through dense city traffic and fend off waves of attacks. If you are quickly overwhelmed by VR games and its controls, then Retronika is not for you.

Easy Rider, but in a sci-fi way

The progression system kept me motivated. In your workshop you can upgrade your hoverbike and buy new, more powerful blasters. Both have a noticeable effect on the feel and difficulty of the game: Upgrades allow the hoverbike to accelerate and brake faster, reach higher speeds and become more maneuverable, while stronger blasters do significantly more damage and pulverize enemy robots in fractions of a second.

You can equip each hand with a different weapon. Shooting with both hands makes the hoverbike stop, adding a strategic touch to the game. Sometimes it’s worth stopping to use both hands to thin out enemy lines even faster.

Retronika alternates between action-oriented missions and pure driving under time pressure. Thanks to a great hoverbike feel and an ingenious soundtrack, the latter missions are always welcome. Cruise through the city with music in your ears and glide elegantly past flying vehicles on a hoverbike: Currently, only Retronika offers such an experience.

Feeling the limitations

Of course, it would be even better if the city was more than just a passing backdrop, and you could explore it freely, but then Retronika would have been a completely different, much bigger project. I get that.

Still, while playing, I couldn’t help but imagine a sequel to Retronika that would break out of the confines of the tubular airways and include more complex missions. The game varies its missions only slightly: sometimes you have to survive waves of attacks, sometimes you have to reach checkpoints within a time limit, sometimes you have to destroy a certain number of robots, and here and there you fight a boss.

Retronika ultimately remains an arcade-style title, which is also reflected in its price. At the same time, it whets the appetite for a sequel that builds on the strengths of the first part and overcomes its limitations.

Visually, I liked the game with its beautiful art style and cel-shaded look, and with the help of the Quest Games Optimizer, Retronika can look stunning on a Quest 3. Different districts, weather conditions and times of day provide visual variety, but you shouldn’t expect massive differences.

There is no multiplayer component, but at least there are leaderboards for competitive players.

Conclusion: Worth more than a ride

Retronika begins slow, too slow. Only after the 15th mission or so, the game becomes more challenging and slowly develops its appeal. This is also due to the upgrades that become necessary and motivate you to keep playing.

The combination of three-dimensional hoverbike controls and decoupled manual shooting is new and challenging, and I’m not sure if Retronika can fully resolve the conflict between these two elements and genres. When it succeeds, Retronika feels great, when it doesn’t, the game can become chaotic.

Retronika is definitely worth the money if you like this kind of game. The studio has been working on the title for a long time, and you can tell that a lot of polish has gone into it.

I played Retronika on a swivel chair with armrests, and I recommend having the latter as it prevents your arms from getting tired.

You can buy Retronika for $6 from the Horizon Store.

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