Haiku the Robot: An Indie Delight that Strikes a Familiar Chord — Time Well Spent
Robots Can Be Knights Too
To teach himself the rhythms of a great novel, legendary journalist Hunter S. Thompson retyped The Great Gatsby word for word. A quote says that, ‘he’d look at each page that Fitzgerald wrote and copied it. The entire book. He wanted to know what it felt like to write a masterpiece.’ As I played Haiku The Robot, I felt something similar was going on, because the game’s resemblance to genre-classic Hollow Knight is clear throughout. Most of Hollow Knight’s insectoid enemies have direct, nigh-on-identical robotic equivalents, down to their attack patterns and sound effects. Hollow Knight’s UI, its animations, its fast travel and upgrade system have all been imitated. The similarities are undeniable. It’s a good thing then that the game is so much fun to play.
In his defence, Haiku’s solo developer, James Morris, AKA Mr Morris Games, shows no intention of hiding his influence. I’ve never seen a homage done quite as overtly as this one, but it’s true to say that the metroidvania genre as a whole has its fair share of similar examples — Axiom Verge feels like classic Metroid, Bloodstained feels like Castlevania. So let’s label Haiku a kind of bite-sized companion piece to Team Cherry’s great creation, a product that if it’s good enough deserves a place in any gaming library, particularly while we wait for Silksong, Hollow Knight’s long-awaited sequel.
The opening cinematic shows the end of civilisation as we know it. A bomb, or something similar, drops on a group of silhouetted buildings. 200 years later, the resultant apocalypse has left the world void of organic life. Only robots exist. You play as one of them — Haiku — who wakes up in a bacta-style tank, and sets off to explore a world that has been tainted by a mysterious corruption. (A corruption like in Hollow Knight no less — but a robot version.)
From the start, Haiku The Robot gives a sense that it has been meticulously crafted. The obvious love and passion put into every aspect of the experience helps me look beyond the game’s derivative elements. Traversing and battling through Arcadia is a lot of fun, which has been forged through well-honed controls. Your attacks, which you expand through the genre-staple upgrade system, are varied enough to provide some room for mastery. Killing some enemies requires a satisfying zen-like timing — a calm-inducing system that helps break up the pace of the overall experience.
Compelling exploration is, of course, metroidvania bread and butter, and Haiku’s take is as effective as in any of its peers. Venturing out from save spots into the slowly-revealing map you’ll feel tense. You explore and battle your way through challenging underground tunnels, wastelands of scrap, huge incinerators, cautious of losing too many of your scarce health capsules. You’re cautious because your more powerful abilities and attacks are limited by the risk of overheating. Dying isn’t nearly as common or frustrating as in Hollow Knight, yet when you finally come across a safe area full of NPCs, along with a sought-after save spot, the relief is palpable.
These locations — like everywhere in the game, in fact — have been lovingly rendered in a mono-colour, high-res pixel art. Oranges, reds, and blues predominate as you travel different sections of the world. Abundant pleasing details draw your eye: leaves drifting across the screen, water sprinklers coming on and off, background fires raging, oil dripping from platforms. The characters are well-animated too. Haiku has a satisfying bounce and heft to his platforming and attacks. The bosses shudder with kinetic madness. The soundscape completes the package, and ties everything together within a mood-setting industrial ambiance. Ultimately, Haiku has been developed to such high quality that it generates its own unique appeal.
So — is Haiku the Robot worth a purchase? Yes, absolutely — the game works well if you’re looking for a shortish, action-heavy experience. Over the eight-hour runtime I lost myself in what is ultimately a tightly-constructed metroidvania in its own right. Once the bosses were dispatched and the simple story was done, locating the final few ability-expanding computer chips (direct Hollow Knight parallel: ability-expanding charms) took me another hour or so, but I was having such a good time with the game that I was happy to do so.
I’m not sure what Hunter S. Thompson did with his copy of The Great Gatsby — I’m sure nobody saw it outside his study. Regardless, he went on to achieve great things. In Haiku the Robot, James Morris already has a well-earnt win.
This is an improved version of a review first published on the gaming website Thumb Culture.
