Haiku, the Robot is a Metroidvania game by Mister Morris Games released in 2022 for Nintendo Switch and Steam.
Two hundred years ago, the world was destroyed by an apocalypse. Now, in a land inhabited by sentient machines, a little robot named Haiku wakes up inside a capsule. With most of the other robots having been corrupted by a strange virus, Haiku must travel the world of Arcadia to find the cause of the corruption, collecting new abilities and meeting other robots, both friend and foe, along the way.
Check out the game's official website here
and its Steam page here.
Haiku, the Robot contains examples of:
- After the End: The game takes place in a world that was ravaged by an apocalypse 200 years ago and is now inhabited by machines. Additionally, most of these machines have become corrupted by a virus and are now hostile.
- Bear Trap: One of the ground-laid traps resembles a bear trap, activating as Haiku steps on it.
- Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: The final shot in the game's true ending is of a butterfly perched on the remains of an old computer in the forest, indicating that the world may now be on the way to recovering.
- Conspicuous Electric Obstacle: Some areas have orange electric surfaces constantly emitting sparks to know it's dangerous to touch them. Central power core also has two nodes that periodically emit electrical charges.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Averted in the Incinerator Burner and Blazing Furnace areas; before getting the Heat Treatment upgrade, Haiku will gradually take damage there due to the extreme heat. Even with the upgrade, Haiku's heat gauge will always be at maximum while in those areas (unless the player has the Heat Drive chip equipped), which leaves them unable to use abilities that generate heat such as Power Bombs or the Space Disruptor, and direct contact with fire still results in death.
- Cool Train: The Traveling Town is a sentient trainnote that serves as the game's shortcut mechanic by instantly taking you to specific points on the map. It's also home to Rondel the welder and Sonnet the book-obsessed shopkeeper.
- Cute Machines: Haiku is a rather adorable robot, with their round body, feet that resemble sneakers, and a face with a perpetual Luminescent Blush.
- Double Jump: The Jump Booster upgrade gives Haiku the ability to jump once while in midair.
- Evil All Along: In the true ending, the three Creators who Haiku frees from the virus along the course of the story are revealed to have been the ones behind the virus all along. As soon as you learn the truth by checking the Lost Archives, they appear and attack Haiku — this time clearly in control of themselves, unlike in the previous boss battles — and serve as the game's True Final Boss.
- Flame Spewer Obstacle: In Incinirator Burner, there are three types of flame spewers. There is floor where flames are constantly vented out via holes, there is a rotating square that shoots out flames in cross pattern. Finally, there are flame traps that activate when Haiku steps on them.
- Flash of Pain: Damaging enemies cause them to briefly flash white.
- Foreshadowing: Inside the First Tree, there are the remains of another Creator like the three ones you meet in the game. The description for the achievement you get for reaching this location in the Steam version is "Find the betrayed Creator". The fact that there is a "betrayed Creator" is a hint that the three other ones aren't as benevolent as the player is led to believe.
- Gentle Giant: Mundo, the elevator in the Factory Facility, is one of the largest machines you'll meet in the game, but he's completely harmless and has some words of support for Haiku if you talk to him. Apparently, he's too large to be affected by the virus.
- Good Morning, Crono: The game begins with Haiku waking up inside a capsule.
- Gotta Catch Them All: There are several types of collectibles to be found:
- Power Cells can be given to Quatern for a sidequest. You get a reward for each one you give him (usually a large amount of Spare Parts, but at some points you will get a Capsule Fragment).
- Capsule Fragments increase your health by one hitpoint for every three you find.
- Chips can be equipped in order to customize Haiku's abilities, and chip sockets increase how many of them you can have equipped at once. Each chip does something different — generally, red ones enhance your offense in some way, blue ones are for defense, and green ones are for support.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: A heartbeat sound plays when Haiku's health is down to one hitpoint, which is rather curious since they are a robot.
- Heart Container: Capsule Fragments can be bought from shops or found hidden in areas around the game world. Collecting three grants Haiku an extra hitpoint, although you need to take the fragments to Rondel to have them welded first.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Unusually for a robot, Haiku fights using a sword — although technically, while it's called a sword in the game, it's actually a large metal chip with sharp edges.
- Heroic Mime: Haiku never speaks in the game.
- Killed Offscreen: Upon reloading your game after defeating the virus, you'll find Limerick's remains in the room with the door to the Mainframe Vault. It's never explained what happened to him, and no text box pops up if you try to examine his body, but it's likely that he was either infected by the virus or killed by one of the infected robots.
- Lost Woods: The Forgotten Ruins are a forest-like area that seems to be one of the few places in the world where plants somehow still grow, despite being underground like most of the game's setting. There's even an enormous tree there named the First Tree.
- Practical Currency: Spare Parts (shown in the game as bolts and gears of various sizes) are the currency used in Arcadia. They're stated to be valuable because they're needed to repair machines and are hard to come by given the state of the world. Haiku can even use them to repair themself, essentially giving the player the ability to recover HP in exchange for some money no matter where they are, although this requires standing still for a few seconds, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attacks.
- Retraux: The game uses a retro pixel art style for the characters and backgrounds, although it also mixes it with a more modern and fluid look for things like the menus and dialogue boxes as well as some of the animations.
- Saw Blades of Death: Certain pits have buzzsaws. Later they come in multiple shapes and sizes. Not recommended to touch them.
- Shout-Out: The Body Modifier ability, which allows Haiku to roll into a ball to get into small spaces, is a clear reference to Samus' Morph Ball ability in the Metroid games, with Haiku's ball form looking almost identical.
- Speaking Simlish: Subverted — while the sounds the robots make when talking appear to be electronic-sounding gibberish, if you listen closely, you'll notice that they're actually reading out the first few words of their text boxes in English, albeit run through a filter to sound heavily digitized.
- Steam Vent Obstacle: In Steam Town, there are pipes that shoot out damaging steam at regular intervals.
- Super Drowning Skills: Initially, Haiku lacks the ability to swim and dies instantly upon falling in water or touching a waterfall. After getting the Sealant Treatment upgrade, however, this is no longer the case.
- Theme Naming:
- Many of the robots are named after types of poems: Haiku, Limerick, Quatern, Sonnet and Rondel, to name a few.
- The three Creators are named after subatomic particles: Electron, Proton and Neutron.
- True Final Boss: After defeating the virus inside the Mainframe Vault, a brief ending sequence will be shown. Upon reloading the game, however, Verse reveals to the player that they found out that the virus was brought about by something greater and the true cause of the corruption hasn't been dealt with yet. The player then has to head to the Lost Archives at the lowest point of the world map to face the three Creators as the real final boss.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: It's possible to destroy the little house that Splunk builds at one point, for no real reason other than to get an achievement. At least Splunk isn't around there to see this by the time you have the option of doing it.
- Video Game Sliding: A sliding move allows Haiku to get a quick forward burst.
- Wall Jump: After getting the Electro-Magnetism upgrade, Haiku can attach themself to walls and jump off of them.
