Haiku The Robot

OK, so I made a deal with you, but you weren’t listening. We agreed that if I accepted you already know about the La-Mulana games, then I could include Haiku the Robot instead. Good.

This ludicrously lovely Metroidvania somehow slipped under way too many radars when it was released on both PC and Switch last year, despite being one of the best examples of the form in recent times. It’s adorable, it puts an emphasis on being accessible, and it embraces the core elements of Metroid that everyone loves.

As is obligatory for the genre, a corruption has infected all the other robots of Haiku’s world, and he must jump, chop and puzzle his way to eradicate the problem. But being a robot, he can do this by adding chips to himself that provide new abilities. However, in a subtle but important twist, you can swap different abilities in and out that change how you approach the game’s challenges. You might make it so when you jump in a spinny ball mode, saw blades spin out of you, or perhaps instead boost your health, or maybe increase the length of your crude sword?

The other stand-out feature of Haiku is just how splendid its exploration proves to be. Rather than just endlessly bumping up against dead ends and having to retrace your steps, here the game shows you where you can’t go yet, but always seems to have an alternative route that is accessible. It relaxes the experience, as does the far lower difficult of the boss fights than most games in this genre offer. It’s absolutely lovely, and a perfect fit for the Switch.