M.A.S.S. Builder

I may be biased, but I currently would only recommend this game for the builder.

Upon entering the game's building editor, I was really surprised by everything that you could do with it! There are custom pieces or other parts that you can unlock through the story. However, I personally only bought this game with the hopes to have the freedom to create mechs and was disappointed to learn that many parts needed to be grinded for through the gameplay missions.

The gameplay itself is... a bit mind-numbing. I personally do not find any interest with it and it has come to the point where I am setting this game aside in the hopes of having some kind of creative/sandbox style mode you can turn on to allow people to just build rather than force the gameplay. That said, parts are not necessarily required to make impressive builds! The custom pieces really do let you make some awesome stuff!

I think that this game does have potential in it's current Early Access state, but I would love to see them lean more into allowing the players to choose if they want to play the story and missions, or to have freedom to just build. It would also be worthwhile to work on the flow of the gameplay to improve it's appeal for the missions and combat. It can be a bit finicky and simple (not entirely a bad thing) but as this is an Early Access Game, it can be expected.

Looking forward to see how this game grows in the future!

M.A.S.S. Builder is a promising gem for mech enthusiasts and fans of deep customization. While still in early access, the game already shows impressive potential as a sandbox playground for creating personalized mechanical warriors. The sheer depth of customization is remarkable — from armor designs to weapon loadouts, every detail feels like an invitation to experiment and perfect your own combat machine.

Pros:
✅ Extensive Customization: The highlight of M.A.S.S. Builder is undoubtedly its robust customization system. Whether you're aiming for sleek, agile designs or bulky, tank-like powerhouses, the options are vast and rewarding. The visual freedom ensures that no two mechs feel the same.

✅ Satisfying Combat Mechanics: Combat feels fast-paced and responsive, with plenty of room to develop unique playstyles through your build choices. Experimenting with different weapon types — from missile barrages to beam swords — offers a strong sense of variety.

✅ Sandbox Potential: The game thrives as a creative platform. Players who enjoy tinkering with designs and pushing mechanics to their limits will find endless hours of enjoyment.

Areas for Improvement:
🔧 Sound Design and Audio Quality: While combat feels solid, the sound effects often lack the punch and impact needed to elevate the action. Explosions, weapon impacts, and environmental audio could use refinement to match the intensity of the visuals.

🔧 Story and World-Building: The narrative feels underdeveloped, leaving much to be desired in terms of immersion. Expanding the lore, improving dialogue, and adding memorable characters would greatly enhance the single-player experience.

🔧 Multiplayer and Co-op Features: While there’s incredible potential for online collaboration and competitive modes, the current multiplayer elements feel limited. Expanding these features could turn M.A.S.S. Builder into a true social experience where players can showcase their creations and engage in thrilling battles.

🔧 UI and Menus: While functional, the user interface could benefit from improved clarity and streamlined navigation, especially when managing complex customization options.

Final Thoughts:
M.A.S.S. Builder is shaping up to be an impressive sandbox experience with exciting gameplay and limitless creative potential. While the game still has room for improvement — particularly in sound design, storytelling, and multiplayer — its foundation is solid. With continued development, it has the potential to stand out as a must-play title for mech lovers.

For those who enjoy building, experimenting, and refining their designs, M.A.S.S. Builder already offers plenty of value. It’s a game worth supporting, especially if you’re excited to be part of its growth.

This game is still in early access and is still being constantly worked on and updated over the past 6 years. So it's not a perfect game, but the game devs haven't given up on this game and that speaks volumes. They are adding to the game with each update and constantly keep their players updated with regular updates.

Is it perfect no? Do they keep working on it, to make it better with each update, HELL YES! I love the fact that this is still an active project and begin worked on. The best way to describe this game is an arcade version of Armored Core that focuses a lot in customization and fun and isn't overpriced. It is a real hidden gem on steam and recommend it to every mech fan. Just load the demo and give it a shot for yourself.

cannot get past the mission 11 without crashing, dissapointed since the gameplay is so good

A great game with tons of customization for your Mechs. Its good if you just want to build something that looks good quickly using the premade parts, or if you really want to fine tune them yourself and make a mech from scratch. The combat is pretty simple, but enjoyable, with a pretty wide range of builds. All in all a really great early access game.

Its awesome

Not saying anything mind blowing here. What you can do with the customization visually is astounding. However, you're actual options for function are rather limited. A pretty small and boring line up weapons. This extends into the gameplay which is just the most soulless thing. Boring flat level design. Uninteresting bullet sponge enemies. You can design the most badass looking mecha, but the game will never let you feel like badass playing it. And the less said about the story the better.

Horrible combat for such a good builder

You need to understand that this is a mech builder first. All of the combat and RPG stat mechanics are very much bolted on in the most basic fashion.

I rarely purchase Early Access games, and even more rarely do I recommend them. But if you are looking for a small game to build your dream mech and drive it around a little, this is a pretty good option for that.

it's a fun game but VD really need to get their finger out their asses and remove multiplayer and release the game, they could focus on fixing and multiplayer after the game is finished, also give us invisible weapons and frames that aren't modded

but needs a better customize hud. hard to go through an nav almost seems to much when comes to armor an what parts go where and make your mech look how you want

For a game still in development, this has a lot of potential as is a good back seat to rest yourself on as you wait for Mecha Break. Not to say one overshadows the other, at least not yet, because as stated this game is still in development, even if you can play now. However, I can say from personal experience the combat is nice as fast paced, and when you pick up the loot from defeated enemies, the victory screen shows you percentages you earned. Those percentages tie into your weapons and armors you can study to customize your mech, and hooo boy is there a lot of different pieces. MASS Builder is feeling to me like gunpla builders and Mecha Break combined. You can change out armor/components/weapons/decal to suit the mech you want the most. Best of all, you can have more than one build, as there is a "build mech" selection.

Admittedly, like all games, earning certain loot and items from enemies might get a little tedious, and hey, the maps ARE repeatable. But so far, for an in-development game? It's super fun. Not to mention you have thirty seconds after the fight before the victory screen pops up, or you can end it yourself simply by pressing a button. With that in mind, you have thirty seconds for a nice photo take! I think I'll include my own girl. She's not named yet, and still a work in progress, but I love her. I trust you'll love your own mech too! So come on, jump in, and enjoy destroying enemies in a mech you designed...YOURSELF!

VERY CRAPPY COMBAT
The combat is pure spam, The PVP sucks.
The whole game is just a dress up robot game and the photobooth system isnt even good.

This Game is different than other Mech Games. Simply put this game has over 500 plus parts to customize your Mech the paint set is wonderful and easy to use. The story could use some work and for this game to have come out somewhat in this era I feel the story should have been narrated with actual voice actors or at the least AI. Either way in 2025 reading the amount of dialogue this game has is a little rough. The game plays like a dynasty warriors variant which is fun and all the enemies on the battlefield equals more fun. Now i ask when can we expect more dev support in the way of graphical updates and or voice support?

mech design good

yes

Honestly I have fell in love with fully customising a mecha down to its weapons. If you are a huge giant robot fan jump in.

M.A.S.S, Builder is fun and it has a lot of potential, combat is alright though could use a little more polish but its not terrible, gunplay needs more work too but its alright though i feel like the guns need a buff because they don't really do enough damage the melee is way stronger than the gunplay it needs a little polish and balance but other than that its fine, there's so much customisation in the game its crazy but also really cool, multiplayer needs work as me and a friend can't get it to function we get a black screen and nothing happens, all and all the game is really cool and fun but multiplayer really needs to be worked on, i understand it's in early access so these things will happen in time and i wish the devs well in the future, don't hate on the game and judge it too hard, remember it is in early access.

As things stand today, I recommend this game for what is clearly the focus thereof, that being the customisation.
Making and refining your MASS is satisfyingly in-depth.

But what you need to do to get all the blueprints for the armour and weapon parts, the combat, is a chore at best and torturous at worst.
I really hope they take the time to improve the combat, but the feel of hits and damage is mostly absent, and the ammo constraints make melee the only viable answer in most cases, which sucks, because taking damage is much more frequent in those cases, and even that isn't communicated well. And suddenly you're dead, but that is also of very little to no consquence, as you can just revive yourself at effectively no cost.

In short combat feels terrible, but you need to get good at it, if you want to get all the cosmetics remotely efficiently.

Very fun

If you're buying, know this from someone who enjoys the game;
This mech game is more like building Gundam kits than anything.

M.A.S.S. Builder prioritizes customization over game-play, which isn't bad, just niche!
A big flaw: Combat is shallow and feels repetitive when unlocking new parts, but because you get a lot of new parts to buy per mission, you have to be committed to the excitement of designing things to keep it from being a mood killer.

If you're looking for a "game", I'd suggest;
Armored Core 6 / TitanFall 2 / Into The Breach / Mechabellum (maybe)

If you're looking for a (bipedal only, so far) mech designing program/game, this is it.
If you find it satisfying to draw up custom designs on paper and pencil and see if you can put that in a game, this is more for you, as it is for me!

Recent import patch removed a lot of exploits the community were using to expand customization like invisible weapon parts and mirrored accessories. Developers removing these also broke the import system itself where it will render left armor parts on the right body. Long awaited feature now bugged and developers ignoring player feedback to focus on garbage unwanted multiplayer.

Decent

Don't bother with this game.

I bought it in early access a few years ago and the game play was pretty basic and incredibly grindy with very few missions but i was hopeful that its early access and will be improved. There has been very little improvement to game play as 90% of updates are based around cosmetics.

Mech customisation looks great at first until you realise that it is almost all merely cosmetic with a minuscule amount functional customisation. what makes matters worse is how expensive every single upgrade/part is leaving you grinding mission repeatively to get anything.

BIG robot cool and customizeable

Best Gundam game ever!!!
M.A.S.S builder is the Gundam, more Gundam than satellite bandai

An amazing customization and skill based combat game. It has it all, it has very intuitive fps mechanics, incredibly simple combat mechanics that will get you through the game but doesn't limit you, you can grow in skill with all of the different types of weapons which brings me to the customization. There will NEVER be two mechs that are alike unless it was coordinated! There is no limit to the customization.

i like it

its a great game for custom mech builds, i will prefer mech vs mech but is ok

awful combat, genuinely only get if you really, REALLY, want the mech customization and nothing else, but be warned, you will be grinding those awful combat segments for mech parts

Overall great game, AMAZING customization allowing for incredible detail to be added to your mech as you progress. The gameplay is fast paced and challenging, which leans well into its various aspects of tuning your mech and arsenal to handle different situations. The difficulty spikes a few main missions against a giant fish monster, but it's more manageable if you actually go back and grind a few missions to unlock new parts and farm the materials to unlock new tuning options that make the difficulty far more manageable. It simulates the ever growing threat of the enemies as the story progresses, making new advancements in M.A.S.S technology add to the immersion. The few issues I have are that there isn't an auto lock on function for melee combat, so you have to swing a bit more wildly if you don't bind the lockon key to your side mouse buttons, but that's manageable. My only major gripe is that ranged weapons fall off QUICKLY. They are always useful to deal with shields on some enemies, or to continue to deal damage while disengaging to allow your shield to charge, but melee weapons deal drastically more damage than your heaviest hitting options for ranged weapons. All i all though, well worth the current price tag, and with it still being unfinished they're bound to adjust some things, rework others, and add more each update.

This will be my first review I've put on steam, so if it seems a bit odd I apologize.

Please note, this review was made around the release of 0.11

I want to say this first off, I enjoy creativity in games when it comes to "character creation" and seeing it moving and acting. M.A.S.S. Builder scratched an itch pretty well for that while giving me that rewarding feeling of me having to actually MAKE the design myself with the main body parts acting as good foundations for the designs.

One particular complaint on the creation side might be the lack of leg types or the lack of ability to create your own leg types, as I'm used to mech games allowing you to have things like reverse joint legs, quad legs, and other types you might see in other mech games. (Perhaps I've been spoiled by games such as Chromehounds, Armored Core, Mechassault and similar.)

However despite the quite honestly simplistic complaint I might have on leg selection or similar, I usually can simply build my way around it, or make something close enough to fit the design I have in mind. I can spend hours or even days just hopping on, building, hopping off, returning, redesigning and refining until I find it perfect. The mirror mode is a wonderful system on there and the quick manipulation of parts by rotation by axis to get it closer to what you want or similar is genuinely extremely helpful too.

The core modification system for changing your mech's stats, functions, elemental benefits, special traits, flight speed, and so on is also quite honestly amazing. It's more in depth than a lot of mech games I have personally bumped into and it's refreshing as far as mech games go. Atop this, changing the mech's appearance, and making those stats make sense in terms of design choices is up to me rather than the armor parts. So I tend to get all the form and function at the same time.

When it comes to the mech's movement, things feel very... stiff, it's not horribly so, but for a mech that is running doing spins and jumps and other little flares of movement with the melee attacks, the main movement feels like it could be better. But again, I don't consider it horrible either.

Onto combat, the combat itself "Exists". It's not particularly amazing or particularly horrible. It's somewhat difficult for me to exactly describe it, it feels like there is enough going on to keep me from falling asleep and new encounters with certain bosses leave me needing to actually being alert. But for the most part I will often find myself sort of having to turn on high energy music in the background to help push for certain encounters so i don't just get bored as it sort of is "dull" at times.

I don't believe this game needs to try and be the best in combat there ever was kind of ideal. But maybe the types of enemies could receive a light touch up to improve how they handle combat movement of enemies and your M.A.S.S., and maybe a better touch up on the soundtrack later.

Lastly, the amount of multiplayer levels is very small, as multiplayer is separated entirely from the main campaign. It would be nice to have a multiplayer exclusive campaign that was it's own story or perhaps a progressive set of arenas with unlockable rewards on the side rather than effectively two or three arenas. However looking at the game as it is now, and the amount of work still very likely to go, I would rather feel it's a wiser choice for me not to worry and simply leave multiplayer alone for a long while until the single player and all the other functions of the game are improved to a substantial enough degree where the game feels close enough to "Whole" by the dev's standards.

I understand fully that this is early access, the game is incomplete. I rather give more or less critique where I can fairly in my review. With all the customization and modifications that you can make to your mech. I can see where the game really shines, in it's building and modification systems for the mechs including the stats, perks, armor, and so on. It's understandable where other things might suffer in detail or quality in the process in order to focus on others.

I understand also that the coding of games is like a minefield, one fix or change can create a whole host of other issues. So it makes sense a game like this has taken so long to work on. Especially since it came out in 2019 which 2019 and 2020 were certainly harsh years for everyone.

I honestly am eager to see where this game goes and how it improves. And honestly, this game while not perfect, is quite impressive for what it is. Thank you all at Vermillion Digital for working on this and I hope to see what new things come to be in M.A.S.S. Builder.

Melee feels like shit

MECH REVIEW: 5/5
Top notch mech customization, from armors, to x,y,z scale, rotation or position, to custom primitive shapes that you can add, allowing you to build Gundams or well known mechs from other anime.

GRAPHICS: 5/5
Graphics wise, I love the rendering of the mechs, they don't look too cartoony, and mechs looks great from a variety of decals, and custom paints.

STORY/DIALOGUE REVIEW: 2/5
Story wise, the dialogue can be a drag as there's little voiced dialogue and story happens like a visual novel with a looped avatar as they deliver their lines, it can be quite verbose and honestly there's probably a decent story and lore but I mostly skipped through most dialogue as there's no dialogue choices that can affect the story- I find the way the story is delivered a bit bland and and probably needs more polish.

LEVEL DESIGN: 2/5
There's verticality (Jump and flight mechanics) but the map itself is pretty confined (Not really expecting an open world) but the map design can feel a little constrained in some areas. This might seem offensive to the developers but the level design doesn't really show case your mechs mobility as you find your mech bumping into invisible walls a lot of times. This is a difficult issue as they can't just add random elements like walls or big rocks to serve as walls as it would hinder player view, but the barren land around the map doesn't really help sell immersion when there's invisible walls everywhere.

GAMEPLAY: 4/5
As for gameplay itself, the various configs for weapon are pretty fun to try, there's development upgrades that can be unlocked that requires materials dropped from missions and various playstyles that can be configured or fine tuned to your playstyle (Close combat focus, Speed, Shooting, CC, Elements, etc...).

QoL Complaints:
>There's a variety of weapons and can be customized, but it can be difficult to tell what a weapon customization does as there's no preview for it(Like what does Auto ->->-> mean or photon means, etc...). Best way to find out what a weapon customization does is to equip it and try it on demo mode which can be a drag when trying various weapon configs.

>Armor, painting and decals where a little funky in the beginning, the hyper customizability of the armors and look of your mech kinda sacrificed some UX design principles, making it a bit hard to figure out how to color each part of your mech.

I would suggest locking some options in the beginning and then slowly unlocking each customization option with a tutorial. This would help with information overload as there's too many things to look at in the beginning and new users can feel overwhelmed and might feel put off by the learning curve to fully customize their mech.

EX: Only some basic parts are unlocked in the beginning, like the head, and then "storywise" it gets damaged so you have to replace the head through a tutorial. It fits both the lore and will teach the player how to configure their Mechs armor slowly without making them feel overwhelmed with all the options and parts already unlocked.

In my experience, it took me several times to pick up this game because it felt like the learning curve is like blender just to customize your mech- which is bad game design in my opinion if I were to put it bluntly. By locking some of the parts(optional), and slowly teaching the player how to change part, color, decals, and even custom shapes, it eases the player into the "MECH BUILDING" which is honestly the BEST and PERFECTed part of this game.

QoL TLDR:
Dialogues, tutorial are too verbose, Weapons configs changes are not obvious, needs a better tutorial to ease the player into the MECH building workflow.

OVERALL: 4/5
Despite the low story rating, some issues with Quality of life improvements, not the best level design, this game gets a solid recommendation simply because it's primarily focused on the MECH BUILDING which is extremely the BEST and well developed part of this game AND gameplay is fun enough to see your MECH BUILD destroy enemies with custom weapons, swords, axes, scytes, rifles, blasters, missiles, lasers, and more...

it would be nice for the game lore and story to develop into something more, but for now it's a Gunpla fan's dream MECH custom game.

Supper fun and chill or as go hard as you want its nice

I played this briefly awhile back. I'm a mech head,so the detailed sandboxing of the
mech builds was a cool feature. But. Back then (a year+ ago),it was labeled Early
Access,but it's release was 2019(???) My concern is that,apparently,Early Access
is being used as a kind of pass for devs to only produce half-made(or worse) games
that get sold to players expecting a more finished product after a reasonable amount
of time(say 6 mos to a year?) I would love for this game to become a fully realized,
and finished(no longer Early Access) version. I like mech games. Finished mech games.
A game with little or no content is like an empty promise. Just a pretty box.
I cannot recommend a shell of a game,no matter it's potential. :/

the best mecha game out there not with just gameplay but the customization of them its amazing.

Control is very clunky. Swapping between closed combat and ranged combat weapon isn't intuitive.

At least mecha customization is cool and very detailed

tbh the best game ive ever played

How do I switch from ranged weapon back to melee weapon?

Refunding until they make the zoom in actually zoom in, instead of snapping your view to some weird 0,0 plane relative to your mech.

A barely competent action game wrapped up in a virtual Gunpla customizer. That was acceptable 5 years ago when it launched, not now with no end in sight.

its pretty good

Fun repetative game allows for a lot of creativity. one of the best mecha games

I like big robot :D

This game is like Gundam Breakers & it's a pretty awesome nice alternative to it. Game is very slept on unless you're mecha savvy, mecha enthusiast, or still want more of the mecha genre itch. I've seen a lot of near 1:1 ratio of players with Gundams, Armored Core, Macross, EVA, Pacific Rim, Transformer or even something unique. The customization on creating your own M.A.S.S or Mecha is insane. This game has a campaign, a 2~8 players PVE, & 1v1 PVP or a 3 on 3 pvp. Definitely a 10/10 game made from a small indie team. It's not made by a bigger budget name studio or corpo either. Just know that it's still in early access. The gameplay is quite clunky still while it's still being polish out. Support these indie devs & let them cook.

I feel as though the backer-reward-exclusive customization options (specifically custom emblems/decals) could be made into a DLC, but overall this is a reasonably enjoyable game with fun mech customization. Recreating M.E.G.A.S. from MEGAS XLR in this is pretty fun

i looove the game but for some reason my game crashes on mission 11.. its not that i dont have a good pc, i actually have no idea why it crashes

Crazy customization. Ive seen people building Gundams, Evas and Transformers almost 1:1 accurately. Gameplay is fun too but nothing crazy. Every Gunpla builders dream.

A great mech game for all to enjoy, not perfect but great all the same.