Today I will talk about a game that I have been playing during this week, and although it is not a retro game, since it is quite recent, it has all the characteristics and aesthetics of those games from more than 20 years ago. Gato Roboto, is a quite curious game since its main character is a simple cat, but a cute cat that is able to control a robot and use it as armor to defeat enemies and live an unparalleled adventure.
The story of this game focuses on the cat Kiki, who after an error when pressing some buttons of the ship in which he was with his owner, which was assigned a reconnaissance mission on a planet, Kiki inadvertently makes the ship collide with the planet's surface, immobilizing his owner, unable to do anything else than get stuck in his own ship, however, Kiki to have a fairly small size can move quite easily and now it will be his duty to find a way to help his partner and escape from that planet. A fairly simple and conveniently odd story to place a small cat as the protagonist of a video game.
Gato Roboto is a MetroidVania, a sub-genre of video games that was formed thanks to video games like Metroid and Castlevania, so this particular game takes a lot of the common and typical aspects of this type of video games. It is characterized by being a non-linear 2D game, which will have several routes to advance in the path of our mission, as well as routes in which we can not advance without having a corresponding skill, thus, in game forces us to have to go back to certain players on the map to get the specific skill, some necessary item or simply some secret that we have left behind.
Kiki can use a powerful armor equipped with different types of weapons that will help us to go through those scenarios that are full of enemies, much of the game we will advance using the armor, however in some sections we will do without it, which is one of the most difficult moments of the game, because without the armor, Kiki is highly prone to death, being nothing more than a simple, but nice cat. However, advancing through the stage without the armor is necessary, since due to Kiki's size it is simpler, or directly, the game forces us to advance without the armor, since in some places of reduced space we will not be able to do it with the armor.
The backtracking in this game is fair and necessary, unlike other games of the genre, which force us to return by certain routes to get a little useless rewards or simply situations that do not contribute much to the main story of the game, in this aspect Gato Roboto does a great job in not making us waste time on such unnecessary things.
Undoubtedly what stands out in his artistic style, as clearly Gato Roboto is not a game that seeks to innovate in the graphic aspect, in fact it is quite the opposite, seeks somehow to honor those games that served as inspiration for his creation, that's why he uses an artistic style purely in 2D and black and white, emulating in an excellent way the games of the old GameBoy. With simple scenarios, but well decorated and even present small animations in them, is a game that overflows great personality.
