Robot wants: series and desires3 min read

Let’s say you have a strong desire, desperately wanting something. Like a kitty or an ice cream.

Ok, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

Then imagine that this something is just out of your reach, guarded by a number of gadgets, obstacles and alien monsters who really don’t care about you, but will not let you through nonetheless.

Now let’s say the tools to get to this thing are all around you, in the most unreachable places and beyond the tougher enemies.

Finally, imagine you are a robot.

Sounds like fun? Well, probably because it is!

These are the premises of Robot wants, a retro-style platformer series created by Hamumu Software originally for maxgames.com. In each of these titles, we take control of an 8-bit robot to guide him through a labyrinth filled with monsters and traps, looking for upgrades to improve our abilities so that we can reach the cherished object of our desires.

This genre is extremely popular in the casual flash games universe, and in time it has acquired the specific name of Metroidvania, which is actually nothing more than the combination of the words Metroid and Castlevania. As in those classics, we are dealing with games in which introducing new mechanics and abilities opens up the access to previously unreachable areas, building up the feeling of exploration and character growth.

Robot wants is a great example of how the flash games reality is in the end not unlike what we are used to acknowledge as videogames.

Since 2012, the chapters of this series were received very positively from the audience and over time they even managed to estabilish some sort of a brand. With each new release, the very title of the game was enough to make the fingertips shake, for the people who enjoyed the previous episodes. This is something even triple.

And indeed it’s in looking at the series as a whole that we can appreciate the beauty of this work. Just as in each of its games, the protagonist gets always better and stronger, in all aspects.

Each of the games is better of the previous ones, even in visuals and soundtracks, which are indeed a bit too simple and monotone in the first one.

Even the gameplay evolves each time, always experimenting and sometimes getting inspiration from the earlier episodes, as in the second title, Robot Wants Puppy, in which most of the abilities are about the kitty which is finally in your robotic hands. Or… claws. Robotic claws.

While all of this might appear very complex, the game is perfectly Casual in its philosophy. With each failure, we are immediately in the action again, all progresses are safe and the only penalty is the timer on the top left going up a few seconds, which means it doubles as a score tracker. Even the leftover health from the various bosses is left untouched.

This allows us to focus on the real challenge, that is the exploration of the maze we are in, without being punished when we try to go too far for our current abilities.

To be honest, I don’t know which one to recommend you. Luckily, HERE you can find them all. Each chapter should not take more than twenty or twenty-five minutes.

I leave you a challenge: to write this article I replayed the first episode with a final time of 16:35.

Can you do better?