Robot Daycare Review

Republished By Plato

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Robots can be whatever we want them to be, but choosing exactly what that thing could be is tricky. Enter KigyoDev’s Robot Daycare, a title that tells of three college students that created a robot AI from scratch. Does this visual novel tell a compelling tale, or is this robotic tale a little rusty?

Oleander, Lycoris, and Streitzia have been best friends since time began. Using the power of friendship (and plenty of college credits), their latest project is a robot AI program called Nano. Designed for an assignment, this humanoid robot needs to be taught the ways of the world. What better school is there than these three?

As players progress through this visual novel, they’ll teach their companion the three laws of robotics, the cycle of life and death, and the general principles of morality. Nano is all too willing to learn, and the choices players make help to decide exactly how she turns out.

However, there’s a fly in the ointment that is looking to turn everything on its head: Lilium. This fourth amigo has a history of depression, and has gone missing after leaving a note for this trio. Unfortunately, these students do not know how to cope with his sudden disappearance, and their general attitude seeps into their relationships with one another and the programming that is going into Nano.

This might seem like a fairly solid premise, but the game does not know whether to focus on Nano or Lilium. While there is a sense of closure at the end, the journey to get there comes across as awkward. Robot Daycare simply does not know how to pick a lane – the story pinballs from one random point to another without any clear direction. It’s not like there’s much of a payoff for either plot thread either; while players will be able to make a number of different choices along the way, the overall brevity of this title prevents players from feeling any sort of attachment to any of its characters. More time should have gone into fleshing out one plot point and sticking with it.

This same principle goes with the other designs of Robot Daycare’s world. It’s oftentimes odd as to what the development team chose to focus on; for every detailed animated background, there’s another that is simply a real life shot of a department store. The actual character art is somewhat lacking as well, feeling like something fresh out of Microsoft Paint, rather than something a bit more complex. As a result, its world can feel like a disjointed one where not much thought was put into things.

While there are two different endings and seven different achievements to earn, this title can be wrapped up in a little less than an hour. Put simply, what you see is what you get.

Robot Daycare lacks any sort of focus, trying to tell two different tales at the same time. While the idea of a robot AI companion is a novel one, the execution here is far too disjointed to make it stand out.

This review of Robot Daycare was done on the PC. The game was freely downloaded.

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