The Universal Robot (Assembled By Hex)
by Agnieszka Trzaska
If you’ve played Plasmorphosis, you know what you’re getting into here (or either of the Rosalinda games, but Plasmorphosis is sci-fi like Universal Robot).
A short, silly (or not so silly) sci-fi romp where your boss has ordered you to assemble and train a robot so he can fire you (out the airlock). Find items, combine items, use items to solve puzzles.
I had a lot of fun with this one. It has a little bit of a split personality; it’s listed as “short” but while I immediately got the “give up” ending and the “do the expected thing” ending in about 20 minutes… it then tells you that there are TWELVE endings total, and finding those probably turns this into a two hour game.
Which is my only real quibble with this game: that’s too much time to spend with it for how much story is here. And even if you’re keeping a bunch of save states, it still gets tedious to try possibilities and it really starts highlighting how clicky the interface is. And I kinda wish the game had left me to my own devices to think up clever things to try and decide when I’m done exploring rather than triggering my completionist “Well of course I want to see all the endings!”
But also the game deserves more time than only the obvious two endings, so… it needs something to suggest that there are other possibilities. I’m not sure what.