Bless indie developers who manage to put together games that are a delight to play and feel energized about, even when it’s something I’d never even heard of before loading it up. I’d like to say that when I’m loading up the gaming roster every week that it’s like Christmas, eagerly ripping the wrapping paper from each one and being delighted. Unfortunately, there’s no question that a lot of what you end up with would be the equivalent of some socks, or perhaps some school clothes, with plenty of nonsense in the mix as well, leaving you to smile at some relative of yours and thank them before moving on and hoping that your luck will improve. Sticking with the metaphor, what can make it all worth it are titles like Junkster that quietly show up under the tree, and look unassuming, but then turn out to be a wonderful surprise.

Playing out in the spirit of titles like Ratchet and Clank and some others, this is a mix of 3D platforming, puzzling, and a bit of building as well. Starting out the game feels unassuming enough, with you simply needing to jump around to collect some cogs, but little by little the building aspect quickly takes root. You’ll start out with some simple structures that will help you get to where you need to go, but then when you start getting to deal in robot parts things move up to that next level of fun. Granted, there are generally only so many ways that you’ll be able to configure everything, but even early on there will be extra goodies out to the periphery that will encourage you to experiment and learn how to make the most of everything you have at your disposal. What I appreciate is that there’s minimal guidance for you doing this, so some gamers may just move on through to the end of the stage, but there’s some great meat for completionists to dig into as well.

Keeping in mind that this is a budget-friendly outing, not everything may be perfect, but you get more than enough value out of the whole package to make it a worthwhile affair. I did run into some smaller glitches a few times that were easy enough to sidestep or recover from, but one of the more annoying and unusual ones involved the view of one of my robot creations always being from the side, no matter how I configured the cockpit. Again, this wasn’t something that stopped me in my tracks, with some other builds it was fine, but it did feel like an odd issue to encounter and didn’t make for an ideal situation facing some enemies that way. Regardless of those minor quirks, this was a wonderful surprise out of left field that feels like a tremendous value.