Note: This review is based on the Nintendo Switch Online Gamecube version of the game
Chibi-Robo was the kind of game it was far too easy for me to ignore in high school, and even into early-college. Bright, colorful, dialog that was communicated through bleeps and bloops rather than "real" language, no real fail state and very few restrictions on how long you could play the game, it felt like the kind of thing my insecurities wrote off as "kiddie bullshit" and that just goes to show how misguided and wrongheaded that instinct is, because this game has the charm, wit, and appealing "tiny creature in a huge world" gameplay that I have so often craved but never quite been able to find. When Satoru Iwata's name popped up during the end credits, it made all the sense in the world. Because while Chibi-Robo has no direct connections, lore-wise, to the likes of Kirby or Mother, it has the DNA of both of them surging through its electrified frame.
The game takes place in a small Japanese suburb in the home of a fairly American-coded family. The father is a portly doofus who overspends, the mother is a slender, slightly overbearing scolder, and the child is under the belief she's been turned into a frog, and is an incredible font of quirky adorableness. The father, in one of his impulsive spending sprees, spends way too much on the hot new device that everyone's got to have: the Chibi-Robo. A tiny helper robot that will do...well, whatever the player controls it to do! We are the titular robo, and it's our job to improve this family's life any way we can. With the help of the omnipresent Teevee, a tiny little cube with a helicopter propeller to help him dip in and out of any scene necessary, Chibi can clean up trash, cook delicious burgers, discover long-lost toys and appliances, acquire new costumes, and help a flailing marriage get back on its feet, whilst also helping the parents understand their daughter a little better.
That all sounds like a tall order for such a tinyman, and perhaps it would be in any other game, but this one makes very few bones (the family dog Tao's favorite treat) about the fact that there is no real pacing to the game's structure. The game rests on the player simply exploring, helping out, improving things little-by-little, and then sometimes a major plot beat will occur, and the dynamics of the household change slightly. Because not only is there a family living here, but rather inexplicably: the family's toys all come to life during the nighttime hours when the rest of the household sleeps! Even Tao's chew toy has been brought to life, and has an undying, tragically unrequited love with the dad's sentai action figure Drake Redcrest, while a wooden pirate yearns to sail the seas (and skies) with his wooden ship, if only he could find a crew of scallawags to help run it.
Brief appearances from the menacing SPYDOR robots serve as the game's only real antagonist, and they're rather easily dealt with the provide scrap, which can be converted into other small, single-purpose robots that help Chibi climb higher and reach farther (or teleport to save time) in certain rooms and spaces. Chibi runs on an internal, rechargeable batter that gently limits how far he can go before needing to retreat to one of the electrical outlets in a given space and top up his health, which also has chunks taken out of it if Chibi falls far enough, or the SPYDORZ manage to get ahold of him. Most actions also cost energy, so it behooves the player to know where the nearest outlet is, and not stretch too far. Though the penalty for running out of energy is simply the day/night cycle cycling over.
The game also tracks certain statistics: how many times the player has recharged, how many drones they've destroyed, how often a strange metal bowl crashes down on them from above, and all of this is for simple fun and, perhaps, comparison with friends playing the same game. Though some of it does get at my biggest, and only, real problem with the game: signposting. I know we're in an age where people think games have gotten to hand-holdy and dumbed down with yellow paint or white cloth, but there would be stretches of time, brief though they were, when I couldn't figure out where to go nor what to do next and it was largely impossible to tell if I had hit a wall where I was waiting for an event to trigger, if I needed a new piece of equipment, or if I was just missing a climbable surface. Because when every dangling cord, rope, or string can be climbed, any are an option, but not all of them lead anywhere. Teevee is ostensibly meant to point you in the right direction, but unfortunately is sometimes his advice is equally useless and ponderous.
None of that should take away from the fact that the game has a ludicrous, often unhinged and very slapstick, charm that overcomes the brief times when the player is stuck wandering from room to room wondering if this dangling cord or string will be the interactive element that opens up a new area, or simply a road to nowhere. And with the game's charmingly low stakes, unlimited time, and absence of a failure state, there's a great deal of fun to be had simply wandering and looking for something to do.
"Tiny creature in a huge world" is a genre with a great many entries, but few capture the majesty of a simple household and the delightful fun of exploring it the way this game does, and since it's now completely available on the Nintendo Switch Online service, there has rarely been a better time to kick back and make some deeply weird new friends.