First, the elephant in the room: Gato Roboto is a short game. I 100% completed it in just shy of four hours (a tad shorter than Metroid: Zero Mission). But I don't mind at all, because every minute of that time was a blast!

Its black and white environments are expertly crafted, even more so than Minit. The character and enemy sprites are expressive and memorable. The game's controls felt tight and responsive to me (I played on Switch with a d-pad joy-con). I found its boss battles to be challenging (I died several times) but very rewarding to conquer. Its map layouts are terrific, with a keen sense for how often your brain will want upgrades and save points along the way.

The biggest surprise for me? The game's theme isn't simply veneer. The devs could have easily pasted a nyan cat head on Samus's torso and rode the clickbait express to memetown, but a lot more thought clearly went into it. Kiki's abilities out of her suit make sense for a cat to have, and are called upon frequently. The antagonist's motivations are clear and are actually relevant to Kiki.

Gato Roboto exceeded my expectations. As long as you aren't expecting a 5-10+ hour adventure, it may exceed yours, too.

As much as this game respects your time, intuition, and skill level, it feels like a glorified game jam; proof of concept; something I would come across for free on itch.io -- as opposed to an $8 game.

In other words, it's pretty short. It took me 3 hours to 100%, and that's with taking my time and dying a lot. It has that type of core gameplay that I think would fit really well in a procedural generated level based game (like Downwell or Rogue Legacy) or simply a longer game.

The replay value after 100% completion is in a few specific achievements, and of course the game just being fun and very speed-run friendly. For me though, playing through it a second time feels too redundant -- like I'm just experiencing the same thing again despite the self-imposed challenges I could go for. It wasn't a waste of 3 hours, but playing it didn't really have an impact on me.

If none of this sounds like a bother to you, and especially if you want a solid, good game-feel game with unique sound design and straight-to-the-point action, then certainly buy this game.

If you're feeling iffy, I'd still recommend getting it when it's on sale.

(OH also as of now, you can't rebind controls, so that kinda sucks.)

Very solid Metroid-like (I'm not saying Metroidvania, because this game is squarely inspired by the Metroid series and there are no RPG elements at all) It took me 6 hours to 100%, which is probably on the long side, as I took a while to kill the second boss because I suck at shoot em ups (maybe 20 minutes, it's the only shmup section).

The game doesn't offer anything new in the genre, but it's a charming, well designed game where you play as a cat in a robot suit, hence the title. I like the mechanic where out of the suit you can do things that only a cat can do, climb and go through small spaces, but you are then vulnerable, which kinds of spices up the gameplay.

Liked:

• Charming game with a fun little story
• Some solid and challenging boss fights
• You play as a cat
• Well designed Metroid-like game +Doesn't overstay its welcome, ends just about when you want it to

Disliked

• The design is fairly straightforward and you don't really need to backtrack much, or even look for hidden items, because it's quite clear from the map where you need to go. Then again, that's better than a game that is obtuse for the sake of it.
• When going back to collect some items, mainly in the ventilation system, it can be extremely tedious to backtrack through the same treacherous zones without a shortcut.

8/10

Gato Roboto is a lovely game. The art style alone made me want to try it - featuring pixel art and only two colors. A very minimalist approach indeed.

The game is a classic metroidvania. Anyone playing any 2D metroid game should feel very familiar with almost everything. Besides base non linear structure it also features a set of familiar character upgrades such are double jump, dash, and standard health / damage upgrades.

However a standard Metroid upgrade - morph ball, that gives you an ability to squeeze through narrow gaps, is replaced with an original mechanic of cat leaving its suit. As you leave your suit you become one hit kill target without a way to defend yourself. But instead you can climb walls, squeeze through gaps and even swim. It is a very simple and clever core mechanic that enables some interesting level design. However in terms of gameplay it does not drastically differentiate itself from all other Metroid clones - a comment that matters only if you have already played many metroidvanias or have completed one recently as I did (Metroid: Zero Mission).

But the game nails pretty much everything that it set itself to achieve. Movement is great, enemies are fun to fight and boss fights are very satisfying with just the right difficulty. The game also features cartridges - probably one of my all time favorite collectables in any game. Cartridges change your dual color palette of the game. After you have collected them, you can swap between them as you please. During your gameplay you will find some great visual puns - My favorite being virtual cat (virtual boy reference) Considering that, visuals are perfect. The authors really mastered the art style.

My only minor complaint would be that some areas were a bit difficult to differentiate from each other. Which was emphasized by the fact that you don't have the map to show you all areas. But the map is quite small so you shouldn't have too many problems memorizing all the exits to different areas.

The story itself is pretty basic but it serves its purpose to give context and meaning to the game. The cat dialogue is lovely. Soundtrack is also nicely composed.

With that said go play it. It is short and sweet. Meow.