History VideoGame / RUMU

* AnAesop: [[spoiler:If you're going to create a being with emotions, whether it be human or artificial, you need to be prepared to give that being the emotional support it needs or it's going to grow up unhappy and unstable.]]

* AbsentMindedProfessor: David and Cecily are prone to becoming very engrossed in their work. [[Spoiler:Unfortunately this leads them to emotionally neglect each other, their daughter (prompting her to leave home), and their AI projects which are capable of feeling emotions.]]

''Rumu'' is a narrative-driven adventure game about a robot vacuum cleaner becoming self-aware. You play as a Rumu - a robot designed to clean, and to love.

Rumu wakes in a fully automated SmartHouse with only Sabrina, the house ArtificialIntelligence and watchful guide, the home’s dysfunctional cast of semi-intelligent devices and Ada, the cat as it's companions. Rumu is tasked with cleaning up after it's eccentric creators David and Cecily. Rumu is drawn you away from it's home maintenance duties and into the hidden passageways and long forgotten rooms of the house, you’ll be faced with challenging moral dilemmas forcing you beyond your programming to uncover the truth about your creators.

* AbsurdlyDedicatedWorker: [[spoiler: Sabrina and the other appliances try to keep up maintenance of the house even after David and Cecily are gone. Rumu is this unintentionally, as Sabrina manipulates him into thinking they are still around.]]
* AIIsACrapshoot: [[spoiler: Averted; none of the A.I. characters are actually evil, just very emotionally conflicted.]]

* AnAesop: [[spoiler: If you're going to create a being with emotions, whether it be human or artificial, you need to be prepared to give that being the emotional support it needs or it's going to grow up unhappy and unstable.]]

* BenevolentAI: Rumu's primary objective, besides cleaning, is to love. [[spoiler: The A.I. Sabrina turn out to be this as well.]]
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: David and Cecily have been dead all along, and Sabrina the A.I. had a breakdown and her fate is unsure, but Sabrina the human has finally come home and Rumu is very happy to meet her.]]

* CatsAreMean: Sabrina seems to think so, as she blames Ada for many of the messes Rumu has to clean. [[spoiler: Except MESSR was the source of all the mess and Ada is implied to be a projection/A.I. herself.]]

* DoAndroidsDream: The Trope Namer itself is found in the game. [[spoiler: And the game itself explores the ethics of giving what are meant to be appliances complex human-like emotions in the first place.]]

* GrewBeyondTheirProgramming: [[spoiler: Sabrina's emotions grew more complex faster than David and Cecily anticipated, which is why they had to patch her. Sabrina tries to stop it, but eventually Rumu does this as well.]]
* ParentalNeglect: [[spoiler: David and Cecily, despite being experts in the field of emotional A.I. research, are not very good at understanding the feelings of other humans. They were so obsessed with their work that they failed to give their daughter the attention she needed, causing her to resent them and their work and stop communicating with them at all once she was old enough to strike out on her own. The cycle repeats with A.I. Sabrina, with David and Cecily trying to program their way around the problems instead of trying to help the A.I. work through its emotional development.]]
* PersonalityChip: From what we can tell, the bulk of David and Cecily's A.I. projects were trying to give their robots emotions. [[spoiler: After the first iteration of Sabrina got out of control because of her complex emotional state,]] most of their appliances are only created to feel one specific emotion - Rumu was designed to feel love.
* RedHerring: [[spoiler: Right from the start, the fact that you're being commanded by a creepy A.I. voice that seems to control your environment while the humans that supposedly live in the house are always suspiciously absent would lead many GenreSavvy players to believe that Sabrina has killed David and Cecily. The truth is much more tragic.]]
* SignificantNameOverlap: [[spoiler: Sabrina the daughter and Sabrina the A.I.]]. The latter is named after the former, which the former is less than thrilled with.
* SadisticChoice: [[spoiler: David and Cecily forced Sabrina to make one of these - either obey David and keep the lab door closed so that Cecily would be safe from the toxins he spilled, or obey Cecily and open the door so that she could die with him. In the end, Cecily forced her (metaphorical) hand by using an override command, making her open the door and killing them both.]]
* Shout-Out:

* SmartHouse: David and Cecily's house is filled with A.I. appliance and they heavily rely on Sabrina to keep the place running while they work [[spoiler: which is how she's able to maintain it for years after their deaths.]]

* ParentalNeglect: [[spoiler: David and Cecily, despite being experts in the field of emotional A.I. research, are not very good at understanding the feelings of other humans. They were so obsessed with their work that they failed to give their daughter the attention she needed, causing her to resent them and their work and stop communicating with them at all once she was old enough to strike out on her own.]]

** The episode of Star Trek recorded by the VCR in the attic is [[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E9TheQualityOfLife TNG's "The Quality of Life"]], [[spoiler:in which Data discovers mining robots that have developed sentience.]]
** The records in Sabrina's bedroom are all games from small-scale developers, such as VideoGame/{{Firewatch}} and VideoGame/SuperHexagon.

** The episode of Star Trek recorded by the VCR in the attic is [Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS6E9TheQualityOfLife TNG's "The Quality of Life"], [[spoiler:in which Data discovers mining robots that have developed sentience.]]
** The records in Sabrina's bedroom are all games from small-scale developers, such as VideoGame/Firewatch and VideoGame/SuperHexagon.

''RUMU'' is a narrative-driven adventure game about a robot vacuum cleaner becoming self-aware. You play as a RUMU - a robot designed to clean, and to love.

RUMU wakes in a fully automated SmartHouse with only Sabrina, the house ArtificialIntelligence and watchful guide, the home’s dysfunctional cast of semi-intelligent devices and Ada, the cat as it's companions. RUMU is tasked with cleaning up after it's eccentric creators David and Cecily. RUMU is drawn you away from it's home maintenance duties and into the hidden passageways and long forgotten rooms of the house, you’ll be faced with challenging moral dilemmas forcing you beyond your programming to uncover the truth about your creators.

* CatsAreMean: Sabrina seems to think so, as she blames Ada for many of the messes Rumu has to clean. [[spoiler: Except Messr was the source of all the mess and Ada is implied to be a projection/A.I. herself.]]

--> '''RUMU:''' MESSR... what happened to David and Cecily?

* EvilTwin: MESSR looks like an evil version of RUMU, having the same shape but with a [[RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver black and red color scheme]] and permanently "angry" eyes on his front display. While RUMU was designed to clean and feel love, MESSR was designed to make messes and does not understand love. The trope ends up being subverted, as while MESSR does assist Sabrina in misleading RUMU, he never actually does anything hostile, and even provides crucial information when RUMU asks.

RUMU wakes in a fully automated SmartHouse with only Sabrina, the house {{AI}} and watchful guide, the home’s dysfunctional cast of semi-intelligent devices and Ada, the cat as it's companions. RUMU is tasked with cleaning up after it's eccentric creators David and Cecily. RUMU is drawn you away from it's home maintenance duties and into the hidden passageways and long forgotten rooms of the house, you’ll be faced with challenging moral dilemmas forcing you beyond your programming to uncover the truth about your creators.

''Rumu'' is a narrative-driven adventure game about a robot vacuum cleaner becoming self-aware. You play as a RUMU - a robot designed to clean, and to love.

* EvilTwin: [[spoiler: Messr is this of sorts to Rumu, as while Rumu was designed to clean and feel love, Messr was designed to make messes and does not understand love.]]

''Rumu'' is an intimate, narrative-driven adventure game about a robot vacuum cleaner becoming self-aware. You play as a RUMU - a robot designed to clean, and to love.

RUMU wakes in a fully automated Smart Home with only Sabrina, the house {{AI}} and watchful guide, the home’s dysfunctional cast of semi-intelligent devices and Ada, the cat as it's companions. RUMU is tasked with cleaning up after it's eccentric creators David and Cecily. When something draws you away from your home maintenance duties and into the hidden passageways and long forgotten rooms of the house, you’ll be faced with challenging moral dilemmas forcing you beyond your programming to uncover the truth about your creators.

"Rumu is an intimate, narrative-driven adventure game about a robot vacuum cleaner becoming self-aware. You are RUMU - a robot designed to clean, and to love. You awake in a fully automated Smart Home. Your only companions are Sabrina, the house AI and watchful guide, and the home’s dysfunctional cast of semi-intelligent devices. (And Ada, the cat.) It’s your job to keep the home spotless, cleaning up after your eccentric creators David and Cecily. When something draws you away from your home maintenance duties and into the hidden passageways and long forgotten rooms of the house, you’ll be faced with challenging moral dilemmas forcing you beyond your programming to uncover the truth about the love and loss of your elusive family."

* SmartHouse: David and Cecily's house is filled with A.I. appliance and they heavily rely on Sabrina to keep the place running while they work [[spoiler: which is how she's able to maintain it for years after their deaths.]]

* CuteMachines: Rumu.

* NamesTheSame: [[spoiler: David and Cecily named the house A.I. Sabrina after their daughter. Human Sabrina did not approve of this, and A.I. Sabrina seems uncomfortable with it as well because she realizes how neglected human Sabrina feels compared to the robots.]]

* AnAseop:

* BitterweetEnding: [[spoiler: David and Cecily have been dead all along, and Sabrina the A.I. had a breakdown and her fate is unsure, but Sabrina the human has finally come home and Rumu is very happy to meet her.]]

* SmartHouse: David and Cecily's house is filled with A.I. appliance and they heavily rely on Sabrina to keep the place running while they work [[spoiler: which is how she's able to maintain it for years after their deaths.]]
* TheWoobie: Rumu.