Roombo: First Blood [Switch]
Samurai Punk’s Roombo: First Blood has you play as something I never knew I wanted to be in a game: a robot vacuum cleaner. It’s Christmas Eve and nobody’s home but Roombo when burglars break in. Utilising a variety of hazards around the house, Roombo must defeat the thieves, preventing them from making off with the valuables, and then clean up - hiding as much evidence of the break-in as possible.
The entire game takes place in a singular house, made up of two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a sizeable dining room and a bathroom, with all of the hallways interconnecting them. The house isn’t huge per se, but when you’re the size of a little robot vacuum, it feels huge. Each successive level gets increasingly harder as more burglars break in each time, and whilst taking them all out isn’t overly difficult (in the earlier stages, at least) - dealing with the cleanup afterwards is. You’ve got a wide variety of seemingly normal household appliances and features, but with a little help from Roombo can turn window frames into projectiles and ceiling fans into weapons of mass destruction. After an enemy’s health bar drops all the way and you go in for one final swoop, they’ll burst into chunks of meat - giving you a few extra bits to clean up.
You get 60 seconds upon the death of the last burglar in each level, to clean up the mess you’ve made. It’s best to clean as you go, leaving less to be done after the fact. The percentage counter only starts to count when the timer does, so bear in mind that anything done beforehand does not affect your total score. Nevertheless, minimising the amount of cleanup required is helpful, as is trying to corral the burglar(s) into a single room, to reduce the space needed to cover - after all, you’re just a little robot, and there’s gonna be a lot of blood.
The art style of Roombo: First Blood is very simple but effective, with well designed rooms in the house that provide enough detail and life (as well as plenty of potential for traps!), without being so cluttered as to become difficult to move around. Different brightly coloured floors allow you to see the blood and footprints well, and the burglars are decked out in all black, with an eye-sight cone in front of them that will glow red when they spot you. The game also begins with a quick and entertaining opening animation, which really sets the mood for the game and gives Roombo some added personality. Sound design is well done too, with a very fitting, stealthy tune encouraging you to stay hidden, and noises being slightly muffled when in cover. And it hilariously has a jolly little tune to lighten the mood as you mop up the gore that you’ve caused.
There are two control schemes offered when playing, the Classic Mode which has you moving in straight lines on a grid - forwards, backwards, left and right - as well as a looser mode where you have full control and can move in any direction. It states that the latter will make the game easier, but both play styles offer their own pros and cons, with Classic’s grid layout making it easier to wipe up everything, but have less manoeuvrability; or the opposite, easier movement but far likelier to leave thin lines of blood or dirt that you just keep missing. I preferred the free movement as the increase in mobility was a great help for pulling off quick dashes under tables or through doorways and out of danger.
It’s a fairly quick game, able to be completed in an hour or two but the ranking encourages you to try again to see if you can get a better score. I do wish that you got more than a minute for clean up after any level, as even if you try to clean as you go the short time given makes it too challenging - especially with more than one burglar in the house. I’d have liked more levels to be included, or additional modes to play - maybe even a clean up only mode would be great to practise, as I really enjoy the satisfaction of cleaning everything up. If you’ve ever been awe-struck watching power-washing videos, then you’ll enjoy this. And at £4.49 on the Switch eShop, it’s fantastic value too!
In the end, we decided to give Roombo: First Blood the Collecting Asylum rating of 7/10.
Have you played Roombo: First Blood yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Samurai Punk for the Roombo: First Blood Nintendo Switch review code!
