Motorslice is one of those games that looks like three different things in the trailer and turns out to be all of them at once. Developed by Regular Studio and published by Top Hat Studios, it puts you in the orange overalls of P, a Slicer tasked with climbing a massive megastructure and decommissioning every machine she finds. The weapon she does it with, a chainsaw sword that whirs and rumbles with every swing, is reason enough to pay attention. At $17.99 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X, it punches well above its price.
What kind of game is Motorslice?
Finishing Motorslice took around 12 hours with 548 deaths recorded, which tells you almost everything about the game's difficulty curve. This is not a breezy action game. The closest comparisons are Mirror's Edge for its parkour-first design, Shadow of the Colossus for its boss structure, and Celeste for the way it handles death and restarts. That last comparison rarely gets mentioned, but it might be the most accurate one.
P is accompanied by Orbie, a floating orb that serves as the player's camera in-world. Orbie can shine a flashlight, scan environments, and occasionally press buttons. The game uses this setup to explain why you're watching P from over her shoulder, and she actually reacts when you shine light in her eyes or stare too long. Small detail, but it lands.
P and her chainsaw sword
How does the chainsaw sword work in combat?
Here's the honest answer: combat in Motorslice is the weakest part of the game. There are no real combos, the charged heavy attack is awkward to pull off consistently, and parrying feels unrewarding except when deflecting projectiles. The chainsaw sword itself is genuinely satisfying to swing, the sound design alone makes it worth using, but the battle arenas surrounding it are the low point of the experience.
Parrying projectiles is where the combat system finds its footing. If you focus on that rather than trying to chain melee hits, the fight sections become more manageable. The chainsaw sword also has a traversal function: P can slice along certain marked walls to open paths or gain momentum. This crossover between combat tool and movement tool is where the game's design feels most intentional.
Don't burn energy trying to master the heavy attack in standard combat encounters. Save your patience for boss fights, where the chainsaw sword's traversal use matters far more than its damage output.
How do the boss fights work?
The bosses are the real reason to play Motorslice. Rather than traditional health-bar fights, they function as traversal challenges that pull together every movement skill you've built up to that point. Think of them as set pieces built around the megastructure's scale. Per the Couch Soup review, using the chainsaw sword to slice through a massive Tonka Truck-like machine is one of the most satisfying moments in the game.
Not every boss hits equally, with one or two feeling underdeveloped compared to the rest, but the majority land well. The key is treating them as platforming puzzles with a combat skin rather than straight fights. Read the machine's structure, find the traversal path, and let the chainsaw sword do its job at the right moment.
Going into boss fights with a combat-first mindset will get you killed repeatedly. Look for the climbing and movement routes first.
How hard is the platforming, and does the death system help?
Motorslice's parkour is where the game genuinely earns its comparisons. Wall running, wall jumping, swinging, and later surprises all feed into a movement system that rewards experimentation. The platforming sections can get brutal, comparable to Celeste's harder rooms, but the restart mechanic defuses most of the frustration.
When P dies, the checkpoint reload happens almost instantly. The narrative frames it as P waking from a bad dream, consistent with her lazy, unbothered characterisation, and you're back in action within seconds. That quick loop makes even a 500-death run feel like progress rather than punishment.
The game tracks your death count, so don't be alarmed when you see it climbing past 100. That number is a badge, not a failure metric.
Should you chase all the collectible orbs?
Motorslice has hundreds of collectible orbs scattered across its levels. Some sit in genuinely dangerous positions. Roughly half of the 548 deaths in one playthrough came from chasing them. One completed playthrough netted 159 orbs, with many more left uncollected.
The practical advice: you only need to collect 30 orbs, including a chain of 5, to unlock any achievement tied to them. The game also has a Chapter Select feature, so missed orbs can be retrieved later without replaying the whole game. Attempt each orb challenge a couple of times. If it's not clicking, move on and come back.
Treat orbs as optional side content rather than a primary objective. The Chapter Select means nothing is permanently missable, so stop dying 40 times on a single collectible and keep moving.
Art style, music, and atmosphere
Everything in Motorslice except P and Orbie uses a stylised low-poly aesthetic that looks like PS1-era geometry on first glance. Look closer and it's actually detailed pixelation designed to mimic that style rather than simply being low-resolution. The distinction matters because the environments have real artistic craft behind them.
The soundtrack, composed by Pizza Hotline, leans chill and ambient during traversal sections. Outside on the megastructure's surface, the scale makes P feel tiny against the structure around her. Inside buildings, the atmosphere tightens into something more claustrophobic. The tonal shift between these spaces is one of the game's quieter successes.
For fans of adventure games with strong environmental storytelling, Motorslice's world-building through scale and sound does more work than its dialogue.
Is Motorslice worth buying?
At $17.99, the answer is yes, with the caveat that you need to accept its combat limitations going in. The chainsaw sword traversal, the boss fights as movement puzzles, and the Celeste-style restart loop combine into something that holds up across a 12-hour playthrough. The low-poly art direction and Pizza Hotline's soundtrack make the quieter sections worth experiencing on their own terms.
The combat arenas are a genuine weak point, and the collectible volume can tip from engaging into exhausting if you push too hard for completion. But the core loop of parkour, platforming, and boss climbing is strong enough to carry the game past those rough edges.
For more on what Motorslice offers across its chapters, the Motorslice strategy guides at GAMES.GG break down specific sections in more detail.
