Roombo: First Blood is a stealth-action game developed by Samurai Punk where you control a cute roomba who is tasked with protecting his family's home from burglars. The art style is simple, colourful and effective in differentiating itself from other indie titles. The controls take a minute or two to get to grips with, but once you do you'll be enjoying this fun, creative and darkly humorous game.
As burglars enter the house from multiple entry points, using the hack mode through a button press will highlight various utilities and sources around the house as a series of traps to deter these criminals, who will be heading for the nearest valuables at hand. These range from ceiling fans that descend upon the heads of anyone unlucky enough to be directly below, to electrical sockets and slippery pools of water. There are also novel objects around the house such as a coffee machine, freezers, knives and even a stand-in shower. You can often use these sources more than once, as well as in tandem, stringing together combinations to create mini elements of destruction. Once enemies break in through various windows (which can also be weaponized), The game provides visible lines that indicate their movement path, providing you with a moment-to-moment indicator to aid you with changing tactics and hacking.
As I momentarily touched on, the controls can take a little acclimatising. You can use tank controls, which more accurately portrays the feeling of being a sentient vacuum cleaner, or a more free-movement system using the left stick, the latter added as part of a post-release update. You can switch between normal, slow speed and a more swifter pace as well as suck in items like knives, cups and other cutlery to fire at enemies, which sometimes doesn't work, and overall feels a little weak. Hacking mode, the most predominant mechanic, works well and slows down the game considerably, enabling you to plan accordingly.
When you're not causing bloodshed, Roombo is also a stealth game, so these bad guys will hunt you down if spotted. Heightened musical cues and visual indicators will warn you of this, but thankfully there are plenty of hiding places that will make you a ghost, like underneath desks, beds and other furniture. This makes the AI easy to exploit, but games in which you can do this are often more enjoyable as a result. Watching these hapless criminals scrambling across the house, stumbling over puddles, sent flying by electrical objects and frozen solid in a block of ice, is often hilarious and always entertaining.
Levels are generally brief, with a set number of enemies to dispatch and valuables to defend, which can be restored by interacting with them. Once completed, you'll begin cleaning the scene which, depending on where or how you kill enemies, will often result in blood splatters up and down hallways, covering the carpets of rooms and adorning the bathroom floors. Using Roombo's vacuum mechanic, you can suck up enemies into literal pieces, as well as all of the blood. A musical jingle also plays during these timed cleaning sequences, which provides both a laugh and an oddly relaxing respite. Levels are scored on a grading system (A-F), with killing enemies, protecting valuables, trap accuracy and cleanliness the core tenets of the system. It's relatively easy to achieve high ratings by naturally playing, which rewards both relaxed play and more frenetic chaos. Levels can be replayed at any time, and finishing the six main missions will unlock three experimental, bonus levels that are fantastic. I won't spoil them, but they are borderline genius in their creative design, and I wish there were more of them.
The game is budget price, and is thus of a short length. Completing those levels, and their bonus variations, will take around 1-2 hours. It does feel like a prelude to something more substantial, which explains the pricing. Roombo: First Blood is a lot of fun, and playing as a roomba makes for some creative and original gameplay. It's also cheap, so well worth the price.