Gato Roboto – The second cat game

Many people talked about the cat game Stray last year, but few know that another cat game – Gato Roboto – actually came out in 2019. In Gato Roboto, you can play cat and mouse, because in your absence, the ferrets created all kinds of fun and danced too On the table. But will the game succeed or does it manage to land all paws on the ground?

The game begins with a short scene where a space pilot detects a strange signal from an abandoned research base of a nearby planet and goes there to investigate. On her way to the planet Miss Spaceship wants to show off and gleefully steps on the dashboard causing the spaceship to crash. Since the pilot is now injured and can’t break free from all the rubble, it’s up to you as the Catwoman to save the day. What follows is a mini metroidvania where you fight frogs, slam crowbars, and climb walls while a human praises you through the radio in your collar.
Sometimes you have to make certain sacrifices and dive into the water even though you don’t want to.

And one more thing – you get access to a robot suit. With it you can launch missiles, double jump and do more swiping. The cockpit, of course, is equipped with warm blankets.

Gato Roboto is a game where everything feels fun and crazy. In essence, it’s a different version of Metroid, but it has a completely different atmosphere, with each part of the game contributing to its unique identity.
It’s made entirely out of one piece, which means only two colors at a time, just like the old Pong game, but despite this limitation, the developers have doinsoft I managed to make Gato Roboto a feast for the eyes. Each room is full of small details and the smooth, almost silky animations – splashing water, exploding robots, cat antics – make everything seem alive. In short, it’s the best thing I’ve seen in one piece.

The objective of the game is to investigate what happened to the research base and restore all of its facilities while trying to stop the mischievous mouse who is wreaking havoc along the way. The quest base is divided into areas that present different types of challenges, with in one area you’ll mostly swim without your robot suit or instead cruise around in a submarine and catch fish, while in another you need to traverse stormy seas of fire and defeat warm-blooded machines. It is even possible to play regions in the “wrong” order if you figure out how.
The game loop otherwise very much follows the metroid formula, finding new skills and equipment as you go with which you can access new areas or get rewards you missed out on before. All of the skills are useful, but the game dash I forgot I had for half the playtime because it’s only needed in a limited number of situations, such as the final stage.

At any point during the game, you can pop out of your robot suit and hop around in just your fur to get past narrow passages or climb walls, with the downside of dying on first contact with anything harmful, which happens every now and then – I’ve definitely consumed over nine lives during My game. There is a big difference between playing with or without the robot suit, as the latter feels bulky and heavy, while the game actually looks like Super Meat Boy. However, it’s easy to get used to switching between the two game modes, and even when the cat is in his robot suit, you’ll never feel like the game is slowing down.

The music enhances the game’s fast pace and is somewhat reminiscent of Hotline Miami, but it occasionally dips into Metroid-like tunes albeit with a permanent blur. I checked on Reddit what the music genre is called and someone came up with the appropriate name Catcore. It might not be a jam-worthy thing.. well, but it fits Gato Roboto’s quirky mood perfectly. The sounds in the game sound compressed and musty. The robot suit makes a nice heavy mechanical sound as it moves or descends from a jump, and defeated enemies explode with a satisfying “pop.” All the sounds in the game consist of a group of sounds that are placed in different pitches and are somewhat reminiscent of the conversations in the N64 game Banjo Kazooie. And you can meow Like a cat – It’s very important

It’s easy to think from the nice surface that the game will be easy, but sometimes the jumping, climbing and fighting in the game is really hard. The main combatants in particular raise the difficulty level considerably. They sometimes feel like a lighter shot and would be right at home in a game like Cuphead. Like the bosses in Cuphead, the guys in Gato Roboto are a lot of fun to play and I would have liked to see more of them or at least an additional game mode where you can fight all the bosses one by one. One thing I can really appreciate about Gato Roboto, especially when compared to the genre’s granddaughter, Super Metroid, is how easy it is to see everything happening on screen during a boss fight and thus be able to avoid all the missiles and projectiles flying through the air. It feels more like I defeat bosses with my skills and reflexes than I can squeeze through countless projectiles out in the open while firing my missiles faster than the boss does. Or maybe I was bad at Super Metroid, but I don’t think I’m alone in that experience.

Gato Roboto only takes a few hours to 100% complete but still offers a lot for the money. There aren’t many other games I can compare it to, other than Metroid. From its simple yet absolutely beautiful graphics to the mystical atmosphere and soundtrack, and the fact that you play a proud and confident kitten driving a big, deadly robot suit, Gato Roboto manages to charm me into my soul.

It rated the game “Very Good out of 5”.

Gato Roboto is available for Windows, Switch, and Xbox One.