Mr. Robot (PC)
created by Moonpod Games, 2007

two games in one?

review written by: Belarius

Click to download the demo

As the NES generation teeters toward middle-age, it comes as no surprise that garage game developers like the two employees of Moonpod should produce games that look back fondly to the best elements of classic gaming. There are surprises in store, however, when these indie games shamelessly fly in the face of convention and attempt to fuse very different genres from the golden age. Take equal doses of Alien 8 and Final Fantasy, make a few upgrades, and populate your world with quirky droids, and you've got Mr. Robot.

Doll -- er, action figure -- not included.

The story tasks all-purpose service mech Asimov with saving the cryogenically frozen crew of the colony ship Eidolon from the ravages of HEL-9000, a murderous AI running the ship. To accomplish this task, Asimov must platform-puzzle his way through the ship, using the terrain to his advantage against HEL's hordes. Asimov must also enter cyberspace and travel TRON-esque dungeons composed of circuitry, fighting turn-based combats with the help of his allies in classic console RPG style. These two very different styles of play develop in parallel, alternating without trying in any way to overlap.

Less is more!

Mr. Robot was created by a very small team (Moonpod has only two full-time employees), and this has driven a design process that focuses on doing as much as possible with the resources the game has. For example, the graphics take a page from Homeworld and showcase how good low-polygon objects with low-res textures can look. The gameplay is similarly streamlined: The controls are minimal (the game can be played entirely with a mouse and the ESC key), the learning curve isn't too steep, and the game makes creative use of its relatively small catalog of objects to create a wide variety of puzzles. All of this fits in a fairly tiny package: the game weighs in at under 50 megs fully installed.

Moonpod especially deserves for packing as much game as it has into this nutshell. My own play-through of the game (in which I missed a few bits) took just about 30 hours, a very respectable number compared to the new generation of A-list console games. Amazingly, despite the repetition of the various individual elements (same robots, same crates, etc.), I was never bored, because the game introduces new ideas and new challenges regularly enough that it doesn't often feel redundant. Only in the RPG bits did the poor variety of enemies begin to wear thin towards the end of the game.

The jumpingest robot in the whole alpha quadrant.

Another surprise was the game's storyline. Strictly speaking, the game isn't deep. It is, however, deeper than I was expecting. The story allows you, for example, to make mistakes that cost you the lives of allies. The characters are faced with ethical quandries, and the dialog for the game convincingly conveys their distress. While the overall story is effectively linear, it has enough flexibility to keep you on your toes. Overall, the result is a story reminiscent of a PG-rated "family movie" that is willing to leave its audience comfort zone once in a while. Mr. Robot's plot doesn't shock, but it does engage. The quality of the writing goes a long way to keep the player interested, and in so doing serves to conceal some of the game's flaws.

The game's depth is somewhat unfortunate, because it's just deep enough to surprise, but not quite deep enough to really impress. The game is littered with missed storytelling opportunities. Ironically, it is only because of the story's strength that these opportunities are even noticeable: in a typical near-plotless title, it would never occur to the player to think about the story. I'm content with the story as it is, but I hope Moonpod builds on this success in future titles rather than merely repeating it.

Despite all this promise, Mr. Robot is far from perfect. The control scheme is best described as "slippery," both in the rollerblading-on-oil sense during the puzzle sections and in various obtuse menus in the RPG sections. Other aspects of the game appear unfinished. The RPG section's inventory and "program" (a.k.a. "spell") systems are a mess, and the control scheme sometimes feels too simplistic, becoming a burden for certain puzzles. The RPG elements may also seem too arbitrary and repetitive for fans of more complex titles.

j00 h4x!

More seriously, several of the game's puzzle mechanics occasionally fail in spectacular ways, the most notable being the occasional failure of the "Reset Room" command. Rarely an issue, this command becomes a serious problem during one stretch of the game, where it consistently causes a vital ally to vanish without a trace, effectively trapping you and forcing you to return to your last save point. While this isn't a game-breaking issue, it is an annoyingly glaring oversight. These failings are a dark mark on an otherwise brilliantly straightforward game.

Overall, the reason Mr. Robot is a successful hybrid game is because Moonpod wisely trimmed each game type down to its essentials, and then kept the two styles of gameplay in isolation from one another. Instead of forcing one game type's mechanics on the other, both work in their own seperate sections of the game, and do so quite elegantly. Both styles of play benefit from considerable style and charm, and are woven together using the character's progression through the story. Admittedly, this leads to some odd moments (the strangest of which was when I received extra RPG-section party members from a puzzle-section 'treasure chest'), but overall, with a few kinks, the game works.

The games greatest misfortune, from a commercial perspective, is that players will enjoy the game only if they enjoy both platform puzzle games and console-style RPGs. If you hate jumping puzzles, or hate turn-based combat, this game isn't for you. But if you enjoy both, you owe it to yourself to check out this delightful title.