Even wondered what would happened if you replaced ‘Samus’ from the ‘Metroid’ series with a cat? And say this cat had access to an impressive arsenal of giant robotic mech suits and weaponary, whilst roaming an isolate space planet?

Sounds insane, yet awesome, right?! Well Devolver Digital, the studio that has brought us such classic Indie games such as ‘Gods Will Be Watching’, ‘Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number’ & ‘Broforce’ have decided such an idea should be a reality and thus comes their new release, ‘Gato Roboto’.

STORY
Gato Roboto is set in a futuristic world. A space commander sends a message to his command, stating a nearby planet is sending out a distress signal. The command team state its an old factory that has been abandoned for some time. The commander wishes to investigate anyway, and shortly after being granted permission to do so, his cat jumps up onto the computer console, sending the ship crashing into the nearby factory-hosting planet.

Upon arrival, the commander is pinned / trapped inside his crashed ship. However, his cat cleanly springs out of the ship, landing on the desolate planet. Communicating to the cat via a communication collar, the commander urges the cat to go on and find a nearby mech suit, used by engineers on the planet.

After traversing through some narrow entry points and tight confines, you find the mech suit and suit up for action!

As you retrace your steps to the commander, you begin to discover that all is not what it appears to be on the planet. Maybe the distress call is real, and that the planet is hosting more secrets than meets the eye…

GAMEPLAY
Gato Roboto is an Action / Adventure game. The majority of the game-play takes place on the mysterious planet, through an underground labyrinth of various tricks and challenging platforms to navigate around. Your overall task is to track down the source of the distress call, but along your way you encounter other creatures. Most want to harm you, some want to help you. Some may have even formerly been human and have been turned into an animal (your encounter a mouse than can talk. Weird, but wonderful!)

The other portion of the game majority of the time has your travelling around in a mech suit. Along the way to the distress beacon, you’ll be finding upgrades and new weapons for your mech suit. These can range from new weapons (like a rocket launcher), to boost to your jump, to suit health increases. During this time, you can hope in and out of your suit, allowing you to better reach the requested area / item as the cat or the suit, both of which add-on to the impeccable and easy to pick up and play game-play.

CONTROLS
The W, A, S, D keys help to control your feline hero. Upon entering the mech suit, allowing wit the previously mentioned movement keys, you add X, C, and V which become your firsthand lot of handy offensive style buttons, to which you’ll come to love and mash in no time!

GRAPHICS + SOUND
Possibly sharing a similar art style (and love) from the famed Undertale series, the majority of Gato Roboto is done in a black and white pixel format. Although many indie games prefer to be hand drawn with art rendered background and heavy in-depth background detail, the black and white format doesn’t hinder the game at all. It’s almost a throwback to the Atari / DOS style games that allow the graphics to be maintained, thus letting you focus on the tasks / challenges ahead.

The soundtrack is hit and miss. As I write this review, I can honestly state that I don’t remember listening to any (if at all) background music / soundtrack. The sound effects however are great and somewhat comedic, with majority of the NPCS talking in gibberish (similar to that made famous in Banjo Kazooie). But one can’t help but wonder if a heavy detailed / more impactful soundtrack would help to compliment the game.

CONCLUSION
Gato Roboto is a fun, alternate spin on the Action Adventure game style. The idea of a cat running rampant on a space planet in a mech suit is simply hilarious, and Devolver Digital have done an impressive job on bringing this wild and imaginative story to life!

Written by: Brutaleo