Lucas Learning isn’t a brand most are familiar with. The well-intentioned Lucasfilm edutainment brand hoped to tap into the market of Math Blaster and Pajama Sam with a glut of interactive Star Wars titles that would teach younglings the ways of basic math, pattern recognition, rhythm, and the horrors of Imperial assassin droids gutting their own handcrafted machines.
Wait, sorry, did you not expect to be sent running away from your screen as a kid, scared out of your wits by a ruthless machine as you powerlessly fled from it, only to be blasted to your doom? You thought you were going to learn about the basics of physics at your own pace? Well, think again! This is 90s Star Wars, where child NPCs can be killed, Masters of Teras Kasi sounded like a good idea, and edutainment games can scare the pants off of little kids like it did me!
Star Wars: Droidworks is the unlikely spin-off of Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, using the Sith engine for all sorts of 3D puzzle-platforming solved by droids of your own making. While far from a mechanical engineering course, the simple premise of dragging and dropping various droid parts together is addictive - especially the dance function.
Certain droid heads can only talk to certain other types of droids or humans, and various attachments let you interface with different equipment. Plus everything’s in this strange fictional unit of measurement known as "the Metric System,” which is wild, even for the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
Yet there’s something lurking behind those low-poly factories and water filtering plants on Tatooine. A sinister, unrelenting presence that you’re vaguely warned about - a new Imperial Assassin Droid. Of course, as a Jawa agent of the Rebellion, you team up with a Jawa clan to stop their manufacture. Except nobody in Rebel Intelligence thought it pertinent to let you know that not only are the droids active, but will hunt you down midway through the game.
Years before Outlast, Amnesia, or Five Nights at Freddy’s, LucasArts threw an unrelenting, nigh-indestructible hunter at kids that proudly taunts you as you run. I remember as a kid, feverishly searching for some cheat that would grant players a droid arm with a blaster, or a shield - something. Instead, you’re helpless, only able to heal yourself as you struggle to escape the assassin’s clutches. If you make it far enough, there’s a final trap in each stage to bring down the bastard, but each requires timing and preparation.
These ambushes are all scripted to occur when you least expect it. This isn’t some coincidence of mechanics or anything, but a deliberate design choice - that must've been quite the pitch meeting. Your droids can take damage and be dismantled. Every encounter feels like you wandered into a robot slasher flick while just trying to do your job.
You are that Average Joe, salt-of-the-earth worker, just trying to fix the leaking pipe, only for the Empire’s own personal Jason to come machete you when your guard is down. It’s intense stuff. At least, if you manage to survive to the final level, you have the joy of reprogramming all the assassin droids into dance-crazed roombas. Yes, really.
In an era of Puppet Combo indie horror titles with an aesthetic ripped from the 90s, Droid Works has aged remarkably well as a kid-friendly surprise horror title. It might be one of the weirdest instances of all-ages horror to date, but it certainly exists. Now it’s only a matter of time before someone crafts an even stranger spiritual successor.