void tRrLM(); //Void Terrariumnote is a Genre Blending Virtual Pet Roguelike developed by Nippon Ichi, about a robot named Robbienote and an AI named factoryAI taking care of an ill girl named Toriko, who might be the last human on earth.The game revolves around Robbie exploring randomly-generated dungeons in a manner that is very clearly inspired by the Mystery Dungeon series, and more specifically the Shiren the Wanderer subseries. The major twist is that you have to balance your dungeon-crawling with taking care of Toriko, who you can monitor using a Tamagotchi-like device. Furthermore, you have to be wary of contamination: Not only do contaminated items have a reduced effect (most of the time), but contaminated food can cause Toriko to come down with any number of horrible disease that require you to track down a cure. Between dungeon dives you can feed and take care of Toriko, as well as craft furnature for Toriko's terrarium using resources you've found in dungeons.
The game was released in 2020 for the Nintendo Switch and the PlayStation 4.
A sequel was released in Japan in July 2022, with a Western release coming Spring 2023.
This game contains the following tropes.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: factoryAI admits early on that she's responsible for killing the humans she was supposed to protect, and has been wracked with guilt ever since, while cloudAI wants to find a way to revive humanity... even if it means killing factoryAI and sacrificing Toriko to do so.
- Anti-Hoarding: You can only take food out of the dungeons; everything else is converted into raw materials when you return to the scrapyard. Furthermore, food spoils over time.
- An Interior Designer Is You: You can craft furniture to decorate Toriko's terrarium.
- Ambiguous Situation: In the original game, it's not entirely clear if factoryAI has been Killed Off for Real, since in Ending 1 Robbie finds something in the AI's remains that seems to talk to him. The sequel makes it clear that factoryAI did in fact survive.
- Artificial Intelligence: factoryAI, obviously. Later on we meet cloudAI.
- A Taste of Power: The sequel starts with Robbie extremely deep in a dungeon, at a very high experience level with a lot of perks piled up, such that you have to be actively trying to get Robbie killed off.
- Bittersweet Ending: Both of them. You've either destroyed cloudAI and doomed any chance of humanity being revived, or you've sacrificed Toriko in hopes of a better future.
- Body Horror: Pretty much any disease results in this happening to Toriko. In fact, even when she's perfectly healthy she has fungal protrusions growing out of her head and right eye socket. Various maladies continue to plague her in the sequel, thus necessitating Robbie to dungeon-dive to gather materials to make things for her treatment.
- Butt-Monkey: Sadly, Toriko goes through a lot of demeaning things to cure the various diseases she can contract. The horror of it is downplayed because she always goes back to her semi-healthy state of having a mushroom infection.
- CamelCase: A recurring motif; factoryAI is named this way. So is cloudAI.
- Character Customization:
- While you start at level 1 each time you enter a dungeon, every time you level up you get to choose between two random perks.
- You can also equip "Knacks" that act as a Character Class by making certain perks more or less likely to appear, and you can even have some perks be removed from the game altogether.
- Computer Equals Monitor: cloudAI has you smash factoryAI's monitor to kill her, though as stated above it's possible that part of her survived.
- Continuing is Painful: Downplayed. You lose all your levels and items when you leave a dungeon, regardless of whether or not you died. Everything in your inventory except for food that you store in the vault is then converted into raw resources, which are necessary to progress through the game.
- Cursed Item: Contamination works like this, reducing or even outright changing the effects of items depending on how contaminated an item is.
- Cursed with Awesome: Items with high levels contamination tend to be this, having a more powerful effect balanced by a nasty side-effect.
- Cute Machines: Robbie, the player character.
- Digitized Sprites: Averted. Sprites used in the dungeons were all hand-drawn, but designed to look like 3-D models.
- Eating Machine: Robbie can consume organic material to recharge his batteries, but it's not terribly efficient.
- Festering Fungus: The cause of The End of the World as We Know It.
- Good Colors, Evil Colors: Robbie has a green monitor and green antennae. factoryAI has a soothing blue monitor. Most enemy robots have glowing red eyes. Robbie's mass-produced bretheren, when controlled by cloudAI in the endgame, all have red monitors and antennae in juxtaposition. cloudAI similarly shares this trait.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: According to cloudAI, Robbie was just supposed to be a mindless drone, and is surprised that he developed free will.
- Inexplicably Preserved Dungeon Meat: Averted with a vengeance. Everything has a contamination level, and Toriko can fall ill if she eats too much contaminated food.
- Item Crafting: You can use resources you find in the dungeons to build furniture for Toriko's terrarium. While the furniture itself is purely cosmetic, the first time you build something you somehow get a permanent stat boost.
- Justified Tutorial: The game begins with you being instructed to perform some basic system diagnostics. Later on, the AI who was giving you these instructions becomes a major character... and in the endgame, you actually have to defy his instructions to get the alternate ending.
- Multiple Endings
- Ending(0): You comply with cloudAI's plan to revive the human race, at the cost of Toriko's life.
- Ending(1): You reject cloudAI's plan at the last second, saving Toriko but potentially dooming humanity in the process. Notably, this ending actually has a final boss, and is also canon to the sequel.
- Peninsula of Power Leveling: The Endless Ruins, a location you eventually unlock where you can grind for resources to your heart's content without having to worry about Toriko.
- Plague Zombie: One of the many diseases Toriko can be infected with turns her into a Flesh-Eating Zombie.
- Point of No Return: The Road to Revival. Thankfully, if you die during this section, you have the option of returning to right before you left.
- Shout-Out:
- Robbie is, of course, named after Robby the Robot.
- One early-game enemy has an attack called Electric Boogaloo.
- One of the items you can find is called "A Quiet Kit".
- You can randomly stumble across rooms filled to the brim with monsters, traps and treasure. These are referred to as "Monster Houses", the same term and serving the same purpose as the Monster Houses in the Mystery Dungeon series.
- Let's not forget all the shoutouts to other NIS titles as well, including predecessor and fellow contestant for weirdest title ever, htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary:
- The aforementioned Firefly Diary has one in the form of the "Simple Branch" decor item: When placed, they bear a striking resemblance to the protagonist's tree branch horns.
- The terrarium decor item, "Mushroom House" brings with it a colourful exposition from factoryAI, who informs Robbie that it used to be a mascot, before penguins proved to be more popular.
- The "Princess Bed" decor item looks straight out of Criminal Girls.
- Sinister Geometry: Most of the enemy robots have simple, polygonal shapes, as well as glowing red eyes.
- Sprite/Polygon Mix: The dungeons are rendered in 3D, while characters such as Robbie and the enemies being 2D sprites.
- The Speechless: Justified in that Robbie doesn't have a vocal module.
- TV Head Robot: Robbie is one of these. In the endgame, we see cloudAI control several mass-produced versions of Robbie, and he himself dons an appearance consisting of a grotesque amalgamation of monitors.
Welcome home, Robbie!
