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Drejzer's Deliberations @[email protected] · 2026-08-05 · 16:06 UTC

My thoughts on: Motorslice; a review

Motorslice is a pretty fresh action-adventure game, released in May of 2026. It was developed by Regular Studio and published by Top Hat Studios.

I grabbed it the moment it dropped on GOG, but it took me a while to finish it and write this review, as you can see by the date of this post… Having a job and things to do kinda take away idle time.

But I’m here, ready to boldly proclaim my opinions on this gem to the uncaring void… and the LLM data scrappers. And the eventual human reader, if there is any.

Aesthetics

You’d think that environments consisting of sand, steel, concrete and yellow orange paint would get stale. They don’t. There’s a surprising variety and it all looks coherent. And quite good to boot. Each area has its own theme that subtly alters the feel of each area, making them unique, despite being so limited.

And the game regularly lets you marvel at the distance you’ve managed to conquer. The vistas of the megastructure are really, really nice. And they are further enhanced by the fact that you’ve been there — they aren’t some skyboxes or flat unreachable scenery. You could say it’s a little marvel you don’t often get to experience.

The character model looks nice enough, though I guess some may be discouragead by the heavily stylised look of P but I don’t have anything against it. And the animations look good, with a few amusing idle ones, as well as all the little things, like the interactive main menu or selfie screenshot mode.

The three types of enemies look abut as good as you could expect from construction vehicles… maybe with some subtle almost eldritch flair. While the bosses are damn good looking. Despite, or maybe precisely because of, being essentially environmental set pieces that need to be climbed and motorsliced (yes, that’s a titledrop) in special areas.

When it comes to the audio side it’s rather minimalist… Or at least it felt like that. Most of the time you’ll hear the environmental sounds, P’s footsteps or her chainsaw’s engine as they echo in the empty concrete halls and corridors.

There are few music tracks of course, and they are pretty nice. I quite liked the one that plays on the bridges between chapters.

Gameplay

The way it plays brings to mind the Prince of Persia games, especially the 2006 reboot. The bulk of the game consists of platforming in the PoP style: running on walls, swinging on conveniently placed horizontal poles, walking on thin beams or clinging to pillars and cracks in the walls.

While I’ve completed the game using the Xbox controller, I did try out a single chapter on keyboard and mouse. Both control schemes worked very well, so it’s more of a matter of preference.

Bulk of the time is spent doing just that, with the occasional gibbed red splat caused by a misjudged leap, bad timing or a fumble with controls. Or deliberately jumping to P’s doom.

Admittedly sometimes the game freaks out and gibs you seemingly for no reason, but those cases were extremely rare… And I’m about 95% sure were caused by physics engine freaking out on a moving platform… And in one place while moving down a vertical crack in the wall in chapter 7.

And then there is that minor wonkiness of switching the face of the grabbed pillar (and pole), but those are relatively minor things (and are an issue on both K&M and a pad).

The game is a linear series of platforming sequences topped by platforming challenges in the guise of bossfights. And damn the bosses are a spectacle and a joy (if sometimes frustrating) to slice. And while it is linear, the path is a cooling and winding one, giving you glimpses of what lies ahead and, conversely, letting you look back and see the path you’ve taken.

The game does have some actual combat sequences, but they are brief palette cleansers… When they aren’t part of a platforming challenge. There are 3 enemy types: the excavator, the drone and the roller. They don’t really matter, as I said, they are there more as a change of pace than anything else. You could almost consider them another obstacle in the platforming than genuine combat encounters. And in general, combat is pretty much vestigial. Which is totally fine, it’s a great platformer first and foremost and they nailed that.

There is the optional objective of finding and collecting orb drones placed all over the levels… But it felt hollow, at least in GOG version, since the developers/publisher did not decide to add achievement support there… Nor any form of offline/local “achievement page”.

Story

There isn’t much of a story, really. P, a “slicer” arrived at a giant structure with the objective of tearing it down. She’s accompanied by a floating… Spherical drone, “Orbie” (which is technically the player character, according to the credits). The duo proceed to do just that: parkouring through the giant structure and destroying aggressive construction machines.

Though, admittedly the game regularly drops bits and bobs of background lore and setting info. Mostly during the “slacking” scenes, where P says a few lines or interacts with Orbie. Which gives some interesting things to ponder about, like the mention of heresy, or the “resets”.

And I have to give them credit: they did set up a sequel beautifully. And a prequel is also possible for pretty much the same reason… Even if that ending is a little bit… flabbergasting. I mean, people complained about Iron Keep in DS2…

Summa Summarum

All in all it’s a damn good fun. In an almost old-school way, with some of the quality of life things of the modern era.

The only bad things I could say about the game have already been said. For me those are tiny, though I’d love to see achievement support for GOG version.

Aside from that its a great game, with almost nostalgic design. Solid 5. Maybe you can tag on a minus, or two if you are bothered by the lack of Achievements… or the looks bother you… But I couldn’t justify anything lower, really.

Go play this gem.

#ActionAdventure #ComputerGames #gameReview #gaming #GOG #Motorslice #parkour #Platformer #RegularStudio #TopHatStudios

#actionadventure #computergames #gamereview #gaming #gog #motorslice