Gato Roboto puts a cat in a mech suit and asks you to take it seriously. It came out on May 30, 2019, built by the American studio Doinksoft and published by Devolver Digital for PC, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. The setup is a crash landing, a stranded owner and one small animal with no weapons of her own.
Trailer, via DevolverDigital.
Kiki Crashes a Spaceship
Gary and his cat Kiki are flying toward a distress call on an alien planet. Kiki steps on the ship’s keyboard. The ship goes down. Both survive, but Gary is trapped in the wreck while Kiki ends up outside it, and he sends her off to find a mech suit, explore the planet and locate a way off it.
That is the whole premise, and it is enough. Gato Roboto is a 2D Metroidvania that runs on the gap between a soft animal and a hard machine. By default Kiki can climb walls, jump off them, swim and squeeze through small gaps. She cannot hurt anything and she dies in one hit. Climb into a mech suit, found at most save points, and she gains multiple hit points, a gun and upgrades picked up across the world, including a double jump and a dash.
The tension is not decoration. It is the design.
A Submarine and a Turret
Other mechs turn up as the game goes on. There is a submarine, and there is a turret. Each one changes what Kiki can do and where she can go, and the game keeps pulling her back out of the armor to solve problems the armor cannot.
Access to the alien lab, the final area, is blocked until the player clears three systems:
- the aqueducts
- the heating system
- the ventilation system
Only after those three are done does the lab open. The structure is clean and readable, and it gives the middle of the game a shape beyond wandering.
A Talking Rat and a Mad Scientist
The planet is not empty. Voice logs scattered through the world tell of a mad scientist obsessed with keeping his sickly dog Barkley alive. As Kiki clears the planet’s systems, she keeps running into a talking rat. The rat is the scientist, moved into a different body.
He confesses that he used a false security alert to lure Gary’s ship to his planet so he could steal Gary’s body. He transfers his consciousness into Gary. Then he plans to save Barkley by putting his own mind into Kiki’s body. He destroys Kiki’s mech suit, but she uses the passcode — MEOW — to free Barkley from his hydroglobular tube. The scientist appeals to Barkley. Barkley attacks him, knocks him out and leads Kiki to a spaceship. They leave the planet without him. The post-game implies Gary escaped with them in the scientist’s former rat body.
That is a lot of plot for a game about a cat, and it lands because Gato Roboto never stops to admire it. The MEOW passcode is the tell. The game knows exactly how silly it is and spends that silliness on jokes that pay off in mechanics rather than cutscenes.
Cassette Tapes and 1-Bit Graphics
The world hides movement abilities, health upgrades and cassette tapes. The tapes unlock optional color palette swaps for the game’s 1-bit graphics. That is a small thing, and it is the right kind of small thing: a collectible that changes how the game looks without pretending to change how it plays.
One player, side view, single player throughout. No multiplayer, no co-op, no second cat.
Key facts
- Release date: May 30, 2019
- Developer: Doinksoft
- Publisher: Devolver Digital
- Platforms: PC (Microsoft Windows), Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
- Genre: 2D Metroidvania
- Modes: Single player
- Critic aggregate: 7.6/10 (IGDB, 5 outlets)
What the Mech Suit Is Really For
The best idea in Gato Roboto is that the mech suit is a loan, not a gift. Kiki is powerful inside it and helpless outside it, and the game keeps taking it away. A Metroidvania lives or dies on whether its movement feels good enough to repeat, and Doinksoft understood that vulnerability is a movement option. The one-hit deaths outside the armor are not punishment. They are the reason the tunnels feel like tunnels.
The weaker material is the boss design and the pacing around the three systems. Clearing aqueducts, heating and ventilation is tidy, but tidy is also the word for a checklist, and the game leans on that structure harder than it needs to. The talking rat is a good joke told at the right length. The scientist’s plan — steal a body, then steal a smaller body, all to save a dog — is absurd in a way the game earns.
Gato Roboto does not overstay. It is short, it is cheap in the best sense, and it treats its own premise as a tool rather than a punchline. The 1-bit look and the palette swaps give it a shelf life beyond the first run, and the cat does the rest. If you want a Metroidvania that respects your time and has a sense of humor about itself, this is the one.
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