A couple of years ago a friend of mine was planning a visit to a massive arcade with tons of different games and asked for recommendations on what to spend his limited time on. Looking through the list of cabinets on their site, one stood out to me: I, Robot. Checking it out, it looked insane. It was the first-ever 3D polygon arcade game and featured a huge eye on top of a pyramid, a small dude collecting power from flipping tiles in this puzzle/action hybrid gameplay, and shoot ’em up sections against a scary floating blue head. It stayed with me ever since.
Fast forward a few years—Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story comes out. I became a pretty big Jeff Minter fan thanks to Digital Eclipse’s excellent playable documentary. Afterward, I checked out a few of his recent games, such as Llamasoft’s Akka Arrh. Some great blasting there, though I wished for a more involved strategic approach at times. Color me surprised when earlier this year I read that the man himself is tackling a remake of I, Robot. To me, it is a match made in heaven.
I, Robot was already wonderfully bizarre, but with Llamasoft’s light synthesizer game engine, proficiency in all sorts of blasting, signature style of humor, and a whole lot of beasties, this remake comes together to form a fully elevated, mind-bending, score-chasing gem. It is overwhelming, at points oppressive, yet also endearing and playful. Short and sweet—a whole run of its 55 levels can be completed several times in an evening with enough mastery—but intense enough to stay with you and keep you coming back.
The eye watches over your ox robot and shoots it down should it dare to jump on its regular interval watch, but once a stage is cleared you enter a section where you tear through Tempest-like boards, the giant, flipping text encourages you to give ‘em hell while a smaller one up top reminds you to just take care of yourself, maybe treat yourself to some curry today. It is exactly this kind of mix of emotions that Llamasoft is a master of and what makes their games so alluring.
Tensions rise with each new level, every time you come closer to a high score, the text riles you up to attack “maths” in the form of purple tetrahedrons during the shoot ’em up sections, and the more you do the higher your fire rate gets. It is a call to action against the adversary computer. Another message rejects normalcy, the basic shapes you are shooting. Get weird! Get them all! Unleash your inner rebel!
Reacting to your success, the soundscape starts hitting you with a cacophony of destruction and “wows” that play out according to your actions. The screen grows increasingly unreadable. But you do not care. Your weapon is firing at a rate that leaves you invincible. The effects and floating numbers suddenly lose all meaning. They are merely a part of the aesthetic. Congratulations. You have successfully removed the meaning of numbers from your mind. Would be nice to have that power in everyday life.
Then, as if you did not just finish reaching some kind of an enlightened state, you are thrust back into the puzzle environments of the levels. You have to snap out of it and focus on new gimmicks, time your movements with the eye, avoid enemies and obstacles, and decide if you want to go for extra points by fulfilling side goals. If you do well enough, a few levels in you will start encountering arenas featuring more blasting, having you destroy enemies in specific spots to fill out the board with their explosions up to a required percentage.
Sudden difficulty spikes are I, Robot’s biggest issue—some gimmicks are just much more complex than the couple before or after. The scariest is the poison panels that will result in a loss of life if you do not jump after stepping on one and before the eye opens up again, but also cover all tiles you step on before making a jump in poison. Throw two or more enemies into the mix and those levels can eat up lives like there is no tomorrow.
Thankfully, every level can be practiced individually, all being available from the moment you launch the game. Slight friction makes for an enjoyable learning curve, from the slightly preserved momentum to the timing of jumps, and this freedom of approach makes the process of mastering I, Robot easy and approachable. It also brings me back to the past when jumping right into your favorite part of a game was a no-brainer. If I want to play one of my favorite levels, like, say, Ascent, I can do so in less than a minute.
There is plenty more here, like “I, Robot The Ungame” which comfily resides right under the main game on the start screen and functions as a way to freely play with the light synthesizer, the very important “Sheep Test” button in the options menu, or the online leaderboards which incentivize competition, but what impresses me most is how alluring the casual experience is. Each level is memorable, there is no bloat, and the assault on the senses mixes perfectly with the core gameplay. It is just a great structure that is as much a win for Llamasoft as it is for Atari, together making an impressive artistic statement in the landscape pushing against their styles.
Mateusz played I, Robot on PC with a provided review copy.
