PyroCorp has a small PR problem…Every human is dead. Its intelligent robots have gone rogue, wiped out the population living inside the company’s underground cities, and left behind the kind of scandal that could really upset shareholders. To solve the problem, PyroCorp sends in the only robot that hasn’t joined the murderous uprising and instructs it to destroy every piece of evidence connecting the company to humanity’s extinction.
That’s the setup behind Good Robot, a fast-paced shoot-’em-up roguelike from Pyrodactyl that launched all the way back on April 5th, 2016. A decade later, it’s sitting at just 150 Steam reviews despite 90% of them being positive and earning the game a Very Positive rating.
Congratulations, You’re the Good One
The disaster begins in 2031, after pollution makes Earth’s surface uninhabitable and humanity retreats into enormous underground cities built by PyroCorp. Things go reasonably well until the robots responsible for keeping everyone alive decide to kill everyone instead.
You control the company’s final functional Good Robot and head into procedurally generated labyrinths packed with machines that very much belong in the Bad Robot category. The result is a mixture of twin-stick shooting, bullet hell dodging, randomly generated levels, and the constant search for something capable of killing everything before everything kills you.
Visibility makes that slightly more complicated. Much of the environment is plunged into darkness, with your flashlight illuminating only the area immediately around you. Finding another room full of homicidal machinery is therefore less “carefully planned tactical encounter” and more “oh, there you are.”
Please Spend Responsibly on Weapons and Hats
Fortunately, PyroCorp is more than happy to sell you the equipment needed to clean up PyroCorp’s own catastrophic mess.
Weapons range from familiar shotguns and plasma mortars to reflecting lasers and exploding bouncing frisbees. You can carry primary and secondary weapons, swap equipment as you find it, and spend the money earned from destroying enemies on upgrades that make your little floating killbot considerably better at its job.
Or you can spend the money on hats. Honestly, there’s a strong argument for the hats. They’re not purely decorative either. Taking a hit knocks your hat off, effectively giving you a tiny extra layer of protection before the damage reaches your robot. There are even achievements built around surviving entire levels, and eventually the full game, without losing one.
Humanity may be extinct, but at least you can face the apocalypse in stylish headwear.
Ten Years Later, It’s Still Sitting There
Runs send you through increasingly dangerous zones while building up your weapons and upgrades, with bosses waiting along the way and global leaderboards providing an extra reason to chase better scores.
There’s no huge modern roguelite meta-progression tree waiting between attempts either. Good Robot comes from an earlier era of the genre, putting much more of the emphasis on what happens during the run itself. This includes what weapons you find, which upgrades you buy, and whether you can keep your increasingly well-dressed robot alive long enough to reach the end.
Somehow, ten years after release, relatively few Steam players appear to have stumbled across it. So if procedurally generated mazes, bullet hell combat, bizarre weapons, corporate dystopia, and protective hats sound like a reasonable way to spend an evening, you’ll definitely want to check out this rogue discovery.