Its story begins with a space captain, Gary, receiving a distress call from a facility on a remote planet. He speeds there pronto, and is just about to land the craft...when his cat, Kiki, accidentally steps on the controls, and causes a hard landing, which leaves him trapped in his seat. Undeterred, he sends out Kiki to at least scout out the area. By chance, she stumbles on a mech suit that perfectly fits her, and that's when the real fun begins...
Tropes present in Gato Roboto:
- 420, Blaze It: Combined with LOL69, the game opens with Gary entering sector 42069. The commander even seems to take a beat after hearing the sector number but it goes otherwise unremarked upon.
- 100% Completion: There are various secrets and collectibles to find, which contribute to the completion meter.
- Advancing Wall of Doom: In the Ventilation area, Otto the rat chases a defenseless Kiki with a giant spiked vehicle.
- Ambiguous Ending: In the end, the final boss, Otto, having transferred his consciousness from a rat into Gary, fights you in this new body, first in a mech and then just by shooting you with Gary's blasters. Afterwards, he ultimately defeats Kiki in a cutscene and is about to transfer her consciousness into his ill dog Barkley, and vice-versa. However, the computer asks for a password, and this gives Kiki the opportunity to say it instead of Otto. Barkley is lowered down, but then breaks out of the tube and goes for Otto!Gary's throat, and then he and Kiki go into the spaceship together and fly off. It's heavily implied that Kiki was able to transfer Gary's consciousness into Barkley when she gave commands, but since both of them could only communicate in meows and barks, it's not clear, and could just be that Barkley turned against Otto's plan on his own. The Stinger implies that Barkley was always himself, but Gary's consciousness survived in Otto's old mouse body, and he snuck onto the ship in this form, and winks at the camera. If you find the mouse in the Playable Epilogue he will even call Kiki "Good kitty!" before correcting himself and saying "I mean, Squeak."
- Apocalyptic Log: Kiki can come across terminals throughout the abandoned station that contain logs from two of its former inhabitants: Jimbo the security guard, and Dr. Heinrich the scientist.
- Attack Drone: Helicopter drones are a common enemy type.
- Big Bad: Dr. Otto Heinrich was the one responsible for the chaos on the station, and is still around in the body of a mouse antagonizing Kiki.
- Bittersweet Ending: Kiki defeats Otto and escapes, but her new friend Barkley is still terminally ill, and Gary is in the body of a mouse, which will probably not live very long. Not to mention poor Rebbi gets left behind!
- Bloodless Carnage: The normal enemies simply vanish in an explosion. The Final Boss, however, is Gary whose mind was taken over by Otto the mouse mastermind, and gets his throat ripped out by his dog Barkley. A pretty gruesome death, which does leave a corpse behind, but still has no blood.
- Body Surf: Dr. Otto did it to himself with a mouse, he did it to his assistant Rebba in the past with a frog, he does it once again with himself and Gary, and he wants to do it to his dog Barkley using Kiki's body.
- Boss-Arena Idiocy: The last mouse boss has a hovercraft that can shoot rotating laser beams and drop bombs, and is protected by the regenerating ring of armor rotating around itself. It also takes Kiki on after she's finished crawling through the vents without either a suit or a submarine. Instant win, right? Well, it would have been, if it didn't ambush Kiki in a room that contained two laser turrets, which it didn't even bother to disable. Which would give credence to the later claim that he was merely testing Kiki.
- Bottomless Magazines: Your suit will be able to fire its blaster indefinitely (understandable), and it won't even run out of rockets, though the rocket launcher can overheat.
- Cats Hate Water: Although she can swim, Kiki doesn't seem to like water, as evidenced by her reaction when you first come across it. Fortunately, she gets over it immediately, which is good because her mech suit isn't waterproof.
- Collection Sidequest: While the main point of Cartridges scattered throughout the game is to change the color scheme, there's a frog mechanic that will give Kiki permanent upgrades to her mech's blaster at 50% and 100% collected.
- Collision Damage: The suit receives damage when touching any of the enemies, unless you are using the spin jump. Touching any enemies while outside the suit is an instant death.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Averted in the Heater Core level, where the hot temperatures make it impossible for Kiki to get out of the suit, regardless of whether she's next to lava or not.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: The fate of pretty much all the enemies and bosses. And Kiki too, her death explosion is even capable of taking out enemies!
- Deliberately Monochrome: The entire game is in black and white by default. However, there are cartridges you can collect, which change the game's look to a different monochrome palette.
- Double Jump: One of the available suit upgrades.
- Dramatic Irony:
- Gary seems to hate mice and rats much more than Kiki: the battles with unnamed rodent bosses often begin with them behaving rather affably at first, and while Kiki only meows in response, her expressions are also friendly or amused rather than aggressive, but then Gary invariably comes in through the comm link and gives the order to "exterminate"! Then, The Stinger seems to imply that Gary survived...by being stuck in Otto's old rat body.
- One Apocalyptic Log in the Vents hints that this happened to Dr. Heinrich's assistant: he remarks that Dr. Rebecca Brown is both allergic to amphibians and, because of that, hesitant to continue helping his experiment involving swapping a rat's mind with a frog's; in the present, she is the sentient frog that keeps sneezing and offers to upgrade Kiki's guns, likely to get revenge on Dr. Heinrich.
- Elevator Action Sequence: One occurs in the final area of the game.
- Energy Weapon: Your suit's blaster works in this manner.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: One of the rat bosses fights in a lava-swimming mech that has flamethrower arms.
- Foreshadowing: In an Apocalyptic Log at the start of the Lab section, Jimbo says that Dr. Otto Heinrich has been "behaving like a little rat", siphoning funds into providing care for his dog. The Final Boss is Otto, having transferred his mind into the rat that's been causing Kiki trouble throughout the game, and his motive revolves around that dog.
- Flash of Pain: Played straight.
- For Want Of A Nail: It's heavily implied that Kiki contributing to spaceship's crash was the whole reason the villain's plan failed, as otherwise he would have just ambushed them with all his forces right as they walked into the facility.
- Gatling Good: The mech of the Final Boss has a gatling-style bomb launcher. Additionally, the turret minibosses in the Aqueducts have six-shot gatlings.
- Goomba Springboard: The Mech suit can be propelled in this manner after landing on foes from a spin jump.
- Guns Akimbo: The Final Boss dual-wields blasters once outside his mech.
- Heart Container: Strewn about the facility are ten Healthkit Modules that extend Kiki's mech's energy bar by one unit each.
- Healing Checkpoint: Here, it is the only way to heal during normal gameplay. The only exception is the immediate healing that occurs after you beat a boss battle.
- LOL69: Combined withFourTwentyBlazeIt, the game opens with Gary entering sector 42069. The commander even seems to take a beat after hearing the sector number but it goes otherwise unremarked upon.
- Mad Scientist: There are logs left behind by Dr. Otto Heinrich, one of which is about being given an ill dog in the hopes that he'd turn it into a "Freak Creation".
- Mission Control: Gary would have gone in instead of Kiki, but he broke his legs in the crash so he's stuck relaying information to her.
- Motive Rant: The Final Boss gives a surprisingly long one given the nature of the game. The scientist mouse (formerly human), Otto, has a dying dog, Barkley, and he decided to transfer its mind into Kiki, and Otto's own mind into Gary. He does manage to get the latter done: however, the former fails when Kiki either manages to instruct the station's AI to place Gary's mind into Barkley, or Barkley just straight-up rebelled against the plan himself. Either way, the dog ends up ripping the human's throat, thus killing Otto in Gary's body, and then he and Kiki finally leave in a spaceship. The final shot seems to imply Gary's mind is now in Otto's old mouse body, and he snuck onto the spaceship in it.
- No Waterproofing in the Future: The mech suit will be damaged and pushed back if you try to jump into water with it. You'll have to get out of it in order to swim.
- One Hitpoint Wonder: When Kiki is outside her suit or submarine, it only takes single hit to send her back to a checkpoint.
- Platform Battle: In the first part of the Heater Core boss, your space is limited to two platforms above a pit of lava, while the mouse's mech is half-submerged in the lava below and attacks with its robot arms. The lava is drained halfway through, but the platforms simultaneously collapse as well, forcing you to fight on the level's floor, as the mouse's mech extends legs and becomes a Spider Tank.
- Punny Name: The creators must be fans of Styx. Think about it for a second...
- Recurring Boss: The mouse Dr. Otto Heinrich is the target of all of the game's non-miniboss battles. Including the Final Boss, though he's borrowing Gary's body for it.
- Rocket Jump: The rocket launcher makes this possible. It's not necessary for completing the game, but is a good speedrunning/sequence breaking technique.
- Sequence Breaking: It's possible, with copious amounts of rocket-jumps, to complete the Heater Core without the spinjump module; doing so unlocks the secret achievement.
- Shockwave Stomp: The Final Boss can discharge power cells from one of the blasters he wields, which proceed to explode and create a burning shockwave line in either direction.
- Shout-Out:
- The palette names reference the Virtual Boy, The Matrix, Tamagotchi...
- The Steam achievement for completing the game is "Save the animals", referencing the classic donation war for Games Done Quick's runs of Super Metroid.
- Spikes of Doom: One of the platforming obstacles. The two Heater Core minibosses also have a pipe on the back wall of their room lined with spikes, to make you more careful about your jumping while avoiding their attacks.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Kiki herself has this. Although she clearly doesn't like being in water, she can remain underwater indefinitely. Note, however, that her mech suit is not water proof, as stated under No Waterproofing in the Future.
- Surrounded by Idiots: An Apocalyptic Log by Dr. Heinrich has him start to grow fond of a creature he'd been given to experiment on, mainly because he considers it smarter than the people that have been ordering him to do maintenance work and other things below his pay grade.
- Suspiciously Cracked Wall: These can be blown up once you find the missile upgrade.
- Talking Animal: Played with. Kiki cannot talk, and will only meow in response. The boss mouse will talk, however, and same goes for the one friendly frog. In both those cases, they used to be humans.
- Under the Sea: There are underwater levels, where Kiki pilots a submarine instead of the mech suit.
- Video Game Dashing: One of the upgrades for the suit. It is also invincible when performing it.
- Voice Grunting: Every character has their own unique flavor of it for their dialogue.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Gary the owner fulfills this role here, as he communicates with Kiki via her radio collar.
