There are many independently developed titles nowadays, but Flying Carpets Games’ The Girl and the Robot may be one you’ll want to look out for.
At the core of the game, The Girl and the Robot is a third person action-adventure game and you play the part of young girl “trapped in an evil castle” and looking for her way out. Whilst exploring and puzzle-solving her way out, she stumbles across a robot whom she can control with a magic pendant. The once caged Robot is freed and the two of them, the brains and the brawn, venture off to escape both the fortress and the evil that keeps them there.
The game itself draws many resemblances for myself, none of which reflect poorly upon the title. Visually, the game takes me back to 2002, a year when a game you might know as Kingdom Hearts was release. Although the game is unpolished (it is pre-alpha after all), I speak of style rather than graphics. The softness of the faces, the building materials in the environment and lines in the copper remind me of Disney’s Hercules and of all the fond times I spent training with Phil in the Olympus Coliseum.
The gameplay foundation of escorting a duo through puzzles in The Girl and the Robot gave me flashes of the Sony Japan’s classic ICO. Though your duo seem to be equally active and relying on each others strengths, the connection with ‘escort’ and ‘puzzles’ can’t be shaken in my mind.
The Girl and the Robot is “an old story about two souls… a girl trapped in an evil castle… and a robot who doesn’t know friendship… their only hope to work together”. Simple, enticing and familiar in all the right ways. If this title can capture one-tenth of the magic the previous two games I compared it to had, it will be well worth a look at.
Sony and Nintendo both seem to think fondly of The Girl and the Robot as they’ve made deals with Flying Carpets Games to bring it to the PS4, Wii U, as well as Steam.
The game is aimed for a late 2014 release. Check out Flying Carpets Games’ successful Kickstarter and website for more details and upcoming information on The Girl and the Robot.
