Quick Look: A Robot Named Fight

Teethtroid?

I'm not digging the look

Edit: well for 9.99 I guess it's not bad

I hope the developer of this game watches this video and rips Dan's crouch fire noise to insert it in the game.

00:04:20.

Clever.

Had this game on my list but I didn't realize it had roguelite elements. I thought it was just a metroid/metroidvania kind of thing, like Axiom Verge. That's a neat idea of mixing roguelite elements with a metroid game but I'm so burnt out on the concept of doing repeatable runs and stuff.

Many years ago I would have been extremely excited if you said that there will be a "Metroid" that gives you a completely new game every time you play. Infinite Metroids. For ten bucks, maybe, but it still doesn't look like it comes anywhere close to capturing that charm and fun exploration that Metroid and Super Metroid had.

I like the part where it's "real" pixel graphics for lack of better words.

GOY 2017

Meatroid!

Revenant stations are extra lives. The game is really forgiving, completely unlike most roguelites. Health drops are frequent, just like they are in Metroid.

A successful, thorough run takes around an hour but there are achievements for 35 minutes any% and 50 minutes 100% runs.

So Dan wasn't grunting everytime the guy jumped? Man what a bad sound effect.

the idea that Vinny would try to see if Dan saw some subtlety in something is humorous to the highest level.

Dan should not be allowed to make noises.

Is it true that girls can't shoot down? Like how dogs can't look up?

This looks like a PC shareware game from the early 90's! Wow!

If you can't tell bad pixel art from good; this is the 'bad' example. (Metroid is the good example)

Indie games were a mistake.

Is anyone else kind of getting the feeling that people are making these "rogue-lite" games as a way to make shorter games without specific level designs?

Yeah I can't stand this. It's like a metroid game without any of the good game design.

I find this really offensive for some reason. Probably because it skews SO close to the original metroid design but then kinda butchers it with sponge enemies, boring leveldesign and awful aesthetics.

I'm not really the type who scrolls through Steam pages in a search for something new to play, but if I were, "A Robot Named Fight" sure is a name that I'd scroll past without giving it a closer look.

Even if this wasn't a roguelike, I'd still be put off by how floaty everything looks. It also looks like a lot of bad level design and bad art direction.

So I'll pass.

Also, putting a Metroidvania of any variety out right next to an actual Metroid game sounds like a really bad idea, though I guess there are more people with PC's that can run something like this than people with 3DS's.

To be fair to Dan, the way Vinny characterized the aesthetic as "I want to make a Metroid game but I'm pissed that Samus is a girl." and implicated some veneer of misogyny is about as confusing as it can possibly be when he's trying to say that the aesthetic is a lot grosser/fleshier/gorier overall than Metroid.

EEEUUUUGHHHH

Actually the idea is to make games with longer-lasting appeal without requiring so much content generation. So longer for cheaper, basically. The problem is that "cheaper" allows more people to develop games like that, and thus sometimes bad stuff surfaces.

The roguelite trend is going to end soon. I think we're just hitting the tail-end of the dev cycle started by stuff like Binding of Isaac and stuff.

Boy howdy is there a difference between insipred-by and just-that-game. Even the main character just looks like Samus. It's ridiculous

That blaster sound isn't great. I started this Quick Look before going to the bathroom, and I thought birds started chirping in my stove vent again.

This was probably the first time I was happy a Quick Look was nice and short. That blaster noise is fucking awful.

@glots: Seriously, what's with the awful title?

The game itself is pretty ugly. Just because it's pixel art doesn't mean it looks good.

I'm surprised Internet Dan didn't come out during this Quick Look.

That dark room was terrible. That's enough to disregard this entire game.

Üüüüüüügh!

If you want a sub-$20 Metroid-like that's worth your time, check out Axiom Verge.

Don't really like the aesthetic here, or the fact that it's a roguewhatever. With Samus Returns coming out tomorrow, taking a pass on this

This game looks bad. It takes inspiration from a pretty good game, but adds nothing that makes me want to play it. Graphically it's also pretty bad.

@rikkums: Procedurally generated levels can give off a weird P.T. vibe since the "rooms" here seem to be constructed from pre-built assets, and therefore repeat if there aren't enough pieces to choose from. I counted 3 or 4 instances of similar-looking sections in the first 10 minutes of the QL.

Seems very slow and super floaty.

It's not spongy at all past the first area (which ends after the first boss). The problem is that Dan only showed the very early game and then immediately messed up badly and got himself stuck and killed, then showed the very early game again and ended the video. That was practically the tutorial area.

The dark rooms are supposed to be hard limits to your exploration, you're supposed to turn around the moment you notice it's a dark room (i.e. immediately after entering them). I guess Dan didn't realize that. I've never gotten stuck in one but then again I never tried wandering into one without appropriate gear. The darkness doesn't end after you go out the other end of the room so there's no point in continuing. You will receive a light item if you just keep exploring the rooms you can actually navigate.

Dan was grunting for the jumps, the sound he was talking about coming from the game was the death sound of some enemy. The actual jump sound is more of a boing woosh woosh woosh.

Vinny's explanation of the aesthetic probably could've been worded better lol.

I actually think this looks pretty neat. I've only played a few 'Metroidvania' games and every time I've stopped playing purely on the basis that they aren't enough like Metroid, and this seems pretty damn Metroid. Maybe a little too Metroid in terms of the character design but I'll be checking this out regardless.

@speckled_burd:

Yeah I think you are being more than fair. The conversation from the beginning was confusing and everything after that was understandably awkward.

"Didn't like that Samus was a girl". C'mon Vinny. I don't think it looks good either but that's lame to say. It just looks like any number of SNES or Genesis games like Alien Storm or Splatterhouse or even Contra or Shinobi III had that going on in parts.

"The Thing" type aesthetic was big back then, I feel like particularly on the Genesis. Even Altered Beast, the first boss is a big mound of flesh that rips off his face and throws it at you.

Yeah it's a totally different market really.

I don't think because of it. I think the main appeal to developers is if people like your game a lot it can always keep being played again and again (and thus provide consistent income and build a fanbase). And for programmers and devs, it can actually be less work over time. It is very time consuming to hand craft things vs figure out how to develop systems that generate content. It's quite time consuming, and difficult, to do generation well also but I think that's the main reasoning.

For myself, and I know I'm not alone in this, I'm far more likely to replay a hand-crafted game over and over again than I am to play something that has a lot of random generation. I've tried Spelunky and Rogue Legacy and FTL and every time, I have found that the randomness is a massive turn-off for me. Meanwhile, I'll play Skyrim and Dark Souls over and over again, games whose level design and mechanics work the same way every single time but that you can play differently every single time.

@justin258: Yeah I don't disagree at all. At some point IMO as a dev you should be happy with your game being finite and crafted but I just think that is why developers do that right now. It's trendy and they are swinging for what's hot.

I have amateur experience in programming games myself and you can see pretty quickly the appeal of creating systems that generate content. It's all a matter of execution as to how good it is, but it is different.

I can think of different games where I totally agree with your thinking. Usually it can make a lot of experiences more shallow and so I don't want to keep playing your game at all lol.

It's a random example and a niche game, but Black Closet is a game that generates the cases you get and it makes them unpredictable but also not that interesting, with cool hooks you would write if you were hand crafting more things. It just comes to mind because you can really see how it is generating things (and I like that genre) and I can't help but feel like you can make way better mystery/detective cases if you sit down and write them.

Deus Ex is my favorite game because of the level design so I am with you on that.

I do think though it will keep getting better as a technique and that will be really interesting to watch.

EDIT: also one more example: the Witcher 3 was actually a game with generated content. They did that because of the scale. But at some point CDProjekt sat down and said none of this is good enough, so they took all the time to hand craft that content (which took a lot of effort over years). Sometimes you can't beat the hard work.

"As Technology increases, so does wet skin"

--Vinny

Related to Moore's Law, guess you could call this Moist's Law

A misogynistic Metroid? That has to be the most bizarre first impression I've ever heard. We don't even know the gender of the player character and Vinny's supporting evident that it has "a lot more gross stuff" and "designs are a little bit more metal" are somewhat subjective and completely unrelated to the original accusation.

Gallery

Vinny was apparently just trying to very badly justify his knee-jerk reaction to the somewhat phallic man-spreading-shot, but that seems like a really weird thing to get so hung up on.

I think you're being a bit harsh. This is far from bad pixel art.

McPixel is bad. This is above average. Metroid Fusion is upper tier. Owlboy is pretty much as good as it gets.

@icyeyes said:

A misogynistic Metroid? That has to be the most bizarre first impression I've ever heard. We don't even know the gender of the player character and Vinny's supporting evident that it has "a lot more gross stuff" and "designs are a little bit more metal" are somewhat subjective and completely unrelated to the original accusation.

Gallery

Vinny was apparently just trying to very badly justify his knee-jerk reaction to the somewhat phallic man-spreading-shot, but that seems like a really weird thing to get so hung up on.

Vinny said nothing about misogyny. He said that the art reminds him of what a teenage boy would draw in high school during a boring class. More guts! More blood, and teeth! More extreme!

And I see that 100%.

This doesn't look great, as a huge Super Metroid fan, this game misses the mark pretty goddamn hard. It's not just because Super Metroid is one of my favorite games, or whatever, but this just looks like a fan game I'd expect to find for free in some dark recess of the internet.

Doesn't look terrible. Not sure how Vinny got a "pissed that Samus was a girl" vibe. Definitely looks like some gross-out sci-fi stuff though, like The Thing or something. Gross Lovecraft space parasites and such.

@vinny, @danryckert Regarding games with gross enemies, you forgot candidate number one: Dead Space!