Gato Roboto scampers into stores today
The cat that squishes YOU.
Put a cat in a big stompy mech suit and what do you get? Really big scratches in the curtains, probably, but also a neat looking monochrome Metroid-alike. Gato Roboto, developed by Doinksoft, is out today and looking adorable despite its high explosion quotient. As well as a big multi-functional robot suit, the cat can hop out of their armour in order to solve puzzles, crawl through small spaces, pilot other machines, or even just use the barrel of the suit's gun as an impromptu platform. It's all rather clever. Below, a launch trailer with an annoyingly catchy beat.
The trailer makes it clear that Doinksoft have squeezed a lot of character out of the game's black and white pixels. More restrictive than even the Game Boy's four shades of grey, it's hard binary art, and reminds me a bit of the excellent free Hero Core by Dan Remar or (more recently) the charming Minit. The hazardous, robot-filled world of Gato Roboto seems to have plenty of other mechanized animals, including a friendly frog and a villainous rat. Here's hoping that - as this is a Metroid-like game after all - there's the chance to save all the animals, not just the cute ones.
While nobody in the treehouse has (to my knowledge) played Gato Roboto yet, the folks I know who have are saying generally nice things about the game. It's short but sweet, maybe 3-4 hours long for most players and undoubtedly much shorter if you're speedrunning it. There's even an achievement for clearing it in under one hour, although it'll probably take longer if you're shooting for 100% completion rate. Interestingly, there's even an achievement for what sounds like an intentional sequence break, although unintentional ones tend to be more entertaining.
Gato Roboto is out now on Steam for £4.92/€5.60/$6.79, and published by Devolver Digital.