Cats are cute home pets beloved by tens of millions, however they’re additionally fluffy little terrors. They can carry dwelling their terrified, half-dead prey, lie down in actually inconvenient locations, or, y’know, press the one button that makes your spaceship plummet into an deserted analysis facility.
Gato Roboto is a cutesy platformer the place you management Kiki, the home cat of a pilot identify Gary, who’s now marooned and motionless after Kiki crashed their vessel. Luckily for Gary, his cat is ready to pilot a gun-wielding mech swimsuit, regardless of not having opposable thumbs.
Inspired by Metroid in some ways, Gato Roboto has gamers discover the analysis facility’s completely different, non-linear sectors (working by means of the outdated favourites like air flow ducts and a laboratory), and requires them to unravel environment-based puzzles and kill enemies. Kiki will spend a lot of the game doing this in her mech, which is initially solely able to firing pistol rounds and leaping round.
Since this can be a 2D platformer, the controls should be exact, and Gato Roboto succeeds there. Not as soon as did I believe that it was the game’s fault that I missed the platform with a bounce, or an enemy that I attempted capturing at.
On prime of that, all of the upgrades I picked up solely made the controls really feel tighter. Gato Roboto scatters plenty of upgrades all through the analysis facility, all for the mech swimsuit, together with well being boosts, skills, and new weapons. Rockets are a selected spotlight, as they use a brief cooldown timer as an alternative of a finite stockpile of ammo, thus enabling the firing of rockets with reckless abandon. I additionally suggest utilizing the spin bounce to leap lengthy distances while bonking on prime of enemies like some sort of twisted whack-a-mole.
There are additionally a few gadgets that alter the colors on display. By default, the sprites are black and white, however they’ll change to all kinds of different color schemes, together with black and crimson in the event you lengthy for everlasting eye harm. No matter which you select, Gato Roboto has a really cute type with a stunning quantity of element within the environments. The haziness of the volcanic space actually makes it really feel dangerously scorching, whereas Kiki’s little head bobbing contained in the mech swimsuit melted my coronary heart.
Kiki isn’t simply confined to the mech swimsuit, as she will get the possibility to pilot a submarine with weapons and a hard and fast turret for some particular sections of the game. Each has a well being bar, protecting Kiki protected, however when she’s much more weak when outdoors her automobiles. As a particularly regular home cat, she will be able to climb partitions and swim underwater, however any contact with enemies means on the spot demise and being despatched again to the final checkpoint.
That might sound like a problem, however Gato Roboto is just a little too beneficiant with its checkpoints, which in flip makes the game very easy. There’s at all times a checkpoint subsequent to a very troublesome room crammed with hazards, or outdoors a boss battle. Getting again to the place you died is, due to this fact, extra of a minor inconvenience than a deterrent.
Death isn’t actually a relentless companion, anyway. Regular enemies are largely cannon fodder, starting from senseless creatures that cost to the occasional senseless creature that launches projectiles. Any hit they land will immediately kill cat-mode Kiki, however will take off one hit level off the mech, in order that they’re not notably harmful in the event you’re suited up or encounter a loner.
Boss fights solely show barely more difficult, every one requiring you to make use of both a particular improve or automobile you obtained lately to defeat it. Their patterns are simple to decipher, and so they don’t have a ton of well being. Bosses in games like Metroid had been memorable as a result of they had been a problem that had a significant consequence upon failing it, however I felt no sense of triumph after I defeated any of the bosses in Gato Roboto, or frustration after I didn’t.
Added collectively, the checkpointing and simple fights make Gato Roboto really feel prefer it by no means actually will get going. In an excellent world I’d have seen extra attention-grabbing puzzles and difficult enemies, however as it’s, and since there are solely a handful of sectors to discover, your couple of hours with Kiki are more likely to really feel a bit empty.
I actually favored Kiki’s face within the top-right nook of the display, pulling an adorably smug expression as she pew pews her little pistol. But this isn’t a novelty animal Instagram account. Adorable solely will get her up to now, I’m afraid.
