Girls Like Robots Review

Girls Like Robots is the newest game published by Adult Swim Games, from developer Popcannibal. There’s been two key tenets that each title from the publisher has followed: One, their games are absurd in a particular sort of way, whether it be from feeding condos to monsters or acting as the God of Dinosaurs. Two, their games are of a very high quality.

On the outset, Girls Like Robots might not seem like an Adult Swim title, it seems like almost too benign of a puzzle game to be one: yes, the goal is to put girls next to robots and away from blue-haired nerds. But just wait: the game revels in its concept of squared-yet-emotional characters and follows a storyline that’s just absolutely ridiculous and quite funny. Oh, and, it’s really good.

The basic objective in Girls Like Robots is to attain happiness. Girls get happier by being next to robots, but not next to nerds. Nerds are icky. Robots like girls and nerds, but they don’t like being surrounded by girls – nothing in the universe likes being smothered – and they don’t like pie. I mean, girls like pie so much that they’ll tolerate nerds just to get some pie, but robots don't understand it and thus fear it. All this happiness and hatred is represented by points, and each level has a goal score to reach for bronze, silver, and gold medals.

All these elements are slowly layered on by the game, and eventually they all make sense. Then, the game throws a new wrinkle in, or tests the player to make everyone angry, or even throws some timing-based puzzles in the mix. That’s really the strength of the game: it takes its core concept and it constantly remixes it to keep players on their toes, to approach challenges in new ways.

The setting of the game is another strength: there’s a humor in watching blocky characters get all emotional, even if it’s just contented sighs and angry grunts. Of course, there’s the whole ludicrous factor of a boy trying to impress a girl who likes bugs by getting a golden beetle, and fighting off the king of bugs to escape with his life. At some point, it all starts making sense. It all fits in with the rest of the game, as despite the craziness it’s still a rather cerebral game, just taking place in the eye of absolute madness.

Girls Like Robots is a fantastic puzzle game: there’s a lot of creativity that came from such a simple starting point, and the way that everything expands out from its simple beginnings is the kind of trait that great games have. It’s easy to see why Adult Swim Games published it, it’s another winner from them.