Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-04-01 13:04 JST)

Japanese solo game developer matsu friends has released a demo version of Boxed Cell Robot Armies onto Steam and itch.io. The game only supports Japanese, and the full version is scheduled to release on May 26.

Boxed Cell Robot Armies is an auto battler, or auto chess, game where robots depicted in a voxel art style are made to fight. Players place robots called Bokurobos on the grid that makes up the battlefield and aim to defeat their opponent’s robot army. There are many types of Bokurobos and how you place them and compose your team is the key to victory.

The designs of the Bokurobos range from the mechanical to the cute, with a body that gets attached to their cores to give them their primary abilities. For example, light bodies are good in close-range combat, but poor at taking hits. An artillery body is good at long-range attacks, but not suitable for the front lines.

When a Bokurobo is defeated, it loses its body, but the core remains. After the battle, a new body can be attached to the core, reviving it as a new Bokurobo. A body’s special characteristics also get written into the core over the course of battles. In other words, you can systematically attach bodies to cores to build your own specialized robots, such as a powerful attacker or a sturdy support unit.

Battles play out automatically for the most part, but players have a special ability called Overclock that they can use at their discretion. It’s an ability that can have a variety of powerful effects like unleashing an attack that damages all enemies or raising your stats across the board. Overclocking a Bokurobo does heavy damage to its body, but it can also turn the tides of a losing battle.

Boxed Cell Robot Armies is being developed by matsu friends, a college student and self-described Unity fan who spends their days working in Unity alongside their classwork. matsu friends is working on a number of Unity games, and released a prototype of Boxed Cell Robot Armies back in May of 2021. Since then, matsu friends has been adjusting the game for the release of this demo.

Boxed Cell Robot Armies is scheduled to release on PC (Steam/itch.io) on May 26. In the demo available on Steam, players can go through the first 2 of the game’s 5 chapters.