Jeff Freeman plays Chibi-Robo

Here I say “owned” to Raph ;p

Jeff Freeman is playing a crazed cutesy game that I really never heard about before. From Grimwell:

So, their website really doesn’t do it justice. “So, I play a robot that cleans house? Uh…”

Getting around the house is pretty stock puzzle-game stuff, accomplishing various adventure-game type goals isn’t especially difficult or innovative, but the backstory is so serious for what is otherwise an overdose-of-cuteness sort of game…it’s just cool.

Chibi is a birthday gift for the little girl. This makes Mom unhappy because Dad is unemployed, and yet continues to spend money on stupid things… like toy robots. The little girl wears a frog at and pretends to be a frog all the time – the only way to really communicate with her is to talk to her through her teddy bear, since she’s just freakin’ out over the parents-getting-a-divorce thing.

So cleaning house is part of what Chibi does, but the goal is really to fix the disfunctional family – get Mom and Dad back together so the little girl can chill out and everyone can be happy.

And along the way you help solve various problems that the toys around the house have, too; and help to get Giga-Robo back as a member of the family (they couldn’t afford to run him, so sadly they had to store him in the basement).

It’s the juxtaposition of “cute little robot and talking toys” with what is otherwise a “fix this disfunctional family” game that makes it…cool.

The game’s website is here. It’s a Nintendo GameCube game.

I find it interesting because this game looks cool, and it plugs perfectly in the mechanics/metaphor discussion, nodding to Raph and disproving my theory.

Beyond the metaphoric level that Jeff Freeman explained, there’s a game that borrows game styles from everywhere. The tiny robot can move freely around a 3D space, it has limited autonomy with a counter on the lower right (and always carrying around a plug with a perfect physics model), it uses robots to build bridges and ladders, a radar to detect hidden doors, an elicopter to float down from high places, a blaster to shoot at things, a toothbrush to scrub the dirt, a squirter to clean where it cannot reach, a spoon to plant things, a mug used as a tank. It is a puzzle game, a First Person Shooter, an exploration game, a spaceship shooter, a cooking game.

And it may even be a sandbox game. A wonderful one. Now I’m deducing all this just by looking at the website, but if you think about it you could imagine how a big mansion could really become a perfect model for a sandbox game. Think to the possibility to have this huge house seen from the perspective of a tiny robot, make the environment freely explorable from the roof to the basement and the garden. You could have all sort of different activities and games within it, with lots of secrets and even an attempt at a “directed” style of narration through rooms that need to be discovered and unlocked. Cause and effect. You do or discover something here and unlock something somewhere else, or get a hint about how to solve something you couldn’t figure out yet.

Think to the sandbox as a circumference, then add “nodes” within it and link some of them. You would have the freedom to move wherever you like, choose your activities and still have the nodes affecting each other and even creating some sort of plot or “flow”. The house becomes a “theme park”, with no strict boundaries if not in the environment itself and the elements within. It is self contained and you would have the freedom to move around and choose the “order” of the game. No need for a “power growth” if not through the acquisition of tools and new skills that would allow you to reach what was unreachable, discover new places and challenges, expanding your skills and possibilities of interaction and even allowing you to re-run the same rooms and games to discover secrets or interact in a way that wasn’t possible before.

From this point of view even Mario 64 is a sandbox. The metaphors change sharply in the two games but the mini-games and puzzles below are recombined and just “matched” with their purpose and justification. An “house” is a perfect place to stuff in every kind of mini-game and can be seen from completely different points of view. It can be cutesy, scary, mysterious, adventurous.

It is a domestic simulation and a psychodrama. It has all sort of crazy puzzles. And it risks even to feel “immersive”.

Sigh…

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