I remember over a decade ago seeing the artwork for ROBOTA, a series of drawings and concept art from film industry veteran Doug Chiang. In fact, the same website I remember seeing is still up and running. After briefly flirting with an illustrated book with my favorite sci-fi author Orson Scott Card, ROBOTA has finally arrived at what I think is the most fitting medium for it: video games.
Even as the bar is being raised on the quality of Kickstarter projects, I believe ROBOTA really stands out in terms of its high-concept and fantastic artwork. Its obvious that this is a project started out of love for the source material and a desire to bring it to something more substantial and accessible.
For the uninitiated, and I’m sure most of you out there are, ROBOTA takes place long, long ago in our solar system’s past on a planet called Orpheus. This planet was home to humans and humanoid-robots alike, but eventually the planet collided with a proto-Earth to form the present-day Earth and its Moon. It makes for a great universe to house all sorts of stories, the settings depicted by Chiang are beautiful and are a great blend of sci-fi and fantasy.
The game project itself, named ROBOTA: Vengence, is an Android/iOS action-adventure that sees you playing as a robot who can periodically enhance himself with upgrades and repairs, taking on much larger robots in the game’s universe. It sounds fun and if the below video clip is any indication, looks like it has quite the high standards in what its aiming for.
The Kickstarter project is still early in its round of funding, but it has a long way to go. I recommend jumping on this while it is still in its infancy, the creators have already begun to add on extra rewards for contributors.