Bandit Trap Review (Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 & PC)

Bandit Trap channels its inner Home Alone in an attempt to capture comedy gold in a tower defense-like asymmetrical space—a world in which traps can elevate collateral damage, and mischievous thieves can ransack goodies whilst remaining under the eerie gaze of a sentient rubber plant. Think Home Alone meets The Goonies, but without The Sloth. Better yet, picture Orcs Must Die, but swap out the trolls and the foot soldiers for three idiotic burglars who are thrice as incompetent and as greedy for spoils beyond their wildest desires. Kevin, however, remains a prominent fixture in this image, apparently.

Bandit Trap is exactly what it sounds like: a PvP game in which two warring factions—the Bandits and the Trapper, naturally—vie to obtain control over a room, a home, or another loot-riddled location. The Trapper in this scenario, who has the power to construct traps and detonate devices like clockwork or in a sudden fit of spontaneity, has the task of fending off attackers whilst they desperately ransack each room and search for a handful of treasures. The Bandits, however, have the task of hunting the treasures and escaping before the collateral damage reaches its boiling point. If you think this sounds a bit like a modernized version of Home Alone’s SNES debut, then congratulations — you’re bang on the money.

At the heart of all of this is a simple, albeit technical concept that either requires either a mixture of dumb luck and reckless stupidity to complete, or a tactical mindset to overcome. Depending on which side of the track you decide to pledge your allegiance to, you either have a straightforward, almost numskull-like responsibility that requires you to pillage through the biome and calculate your chances, or you have the rather technical chore of triggering traps, blending items into the battlefield, or hiding in plain sight to fool the opposing forces into believing that they’re, well, imagining things. There’s a little more to it than that, but you get the idea.

While the act of hunting for golden heirlooms in the boobytrapped boroughs of Bandit Trap is a lot of fun here, the real joy tends to stem from the Trapper’s obligations to protect their home. In this role, you have a bit more freedom to swagger your weight and wax your creative tendencies. For instance, once you plant your traps and fortify your home, you have the weighty power to utilize a function wheel to plan your retaliation. As Bandits recklessly stroll through the world and cling onto their stolen goods, you have the chance to bend the odds in your favor and rock the apple cart, so to speak.

With Trapper Towers serving as your bread and butter over the course of each bout, you essentially have a third eye on the board at all times. With that, you have your admirable share of options to explore. Do you plant explosives in the walls, or do you boobytrap seemingly ordinary objects to blow your oppressors to smithereens? The board is yours to control, and the only thing that matters, really, is that you dial up the collateral damage to eleven. Unless, of course, you’re playing as a Bandit, in which case your duties are a little more difficult. Well, not difficult, but dangerous. But that’s entirely your fault for being a thief — so there’s that.

Although there isn’t a tremendous amount of variety in the game’s location network, it does offer a solid selection of creative ways to transform each session into a personal playground for both warring parties. Aside from the treasures, traps, and volatile set pieces, Bandit Trap also takes full advantage of its dynamic and ridiculously moldable structure, which allows you to annihilate or pulverize just about anything in sight so long as you have the firepower and the creativity to support the destruction. The objective, of course, remains the same. But, thanks to the sandbox nature of the world and its destructible environment, it is a game that learns how to mesh basic familiarities with a high-octane and oftentimes hilarious sense of unpredictability.

As with most PvP games that base their entire point around the one simple idea, Bandit Trap does harness a gimmick that eventually begins to wear thin the more you subject yourself to it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a barrel of laughs to scoot around in, and it does more than enough to keep you entertained for the short haul. But, like most things, once you’ve seen your fair share of explosions and failed burglary cases, the sense of pride soon begins to wane. You’ll still crack a smile every once in a while, but you might also reach a point where the joke just doesn’t quite land the same way it did when you first started out. But that’s a video game for you; capturing the evergreen spirit is a fickle mirage that only a select few can find.

On the bright side of all of this, Bandit Trap does deliver a cozy and welcoming visual aesthetic that is, all things considered, slightly reminiscent of a Moving Out or Overcooked tribute act. It’s jolly, it’s chaotic, and above all, it’s a real delight to mindlessly gaze at whilst its walls tumble around you. The simple fact that it plays as well as it looks, too, makes it a lot easier to fall in love with, if only for a short while.

Verdict

Bandit Trap sneaks its way into the spotlight as a two-for-one, almost Rubber Bandits-meets-Moving Out hybrid with all of the tower defense like trappings and comical shenanigans of a genuinely good, albeit short and limited experience that can leave you and friends stumbling about and wreaking havoc for hours.

While the journey itself is still without the full weight of a multiplayer game and all of the dynamic locations and gameplay elements, to boot, Bandit Trap does make for a brilliant pocket-sized asymmetrical PvP title with some great comical twists. It might be a little light in some areas, but that shouldn’t stop you from wanting to jump into the fray and sample the waters for yourself the next time you’re in the mood for some good old-fashion good cop-bad cop chaos.