Cooper's Cleanup

It's a cute little roomba simulator, that's all. Unfortunately there isn't much to comment on here, it doesn't seem very ambitious compared to almost every other student project I've tried, though I hope the team still got good grades for this. I wondered why my game time was only 5 minutes until I launched the game again over a year later and beat it in 3 and a half minutes. Might be fun to try and speedrun I suppose, but I don't really see the point in doing so. With such a tiny file size you don't really mind getting maybe 10 minutes out of this one before moving on.

In a longer game, I would love to see this difficulty take a different form than it does here. Maybe Cooper has limited radar pings for each room of the house. Maybe each room has a time limit you have to finish cleaning it by. Maybe some objects need to be pushed into bins rather than sucked into the infinite void that is Cooper's robot stomach. I really don't like that most of the difficulty comes from the controls, the awkward perspective, and the fact that it's impossible to tell which objects are part of the background/floor and which ones aren't. However, for a game that's just long enough for a cup of coffee, it has a fun premise and the simplistic neon visuals work well with the high-tech aesthetic. And Cooper, well... ...he is smol, he is adorable, he is love, he is everything. I am a mere speck of dust in the apartment complex that is this world, and I would gladly be vacuumed up by him. <3

I find the idea of "tank controls" to be strangely captivating for some reason, although not quite in the sense of characterizing it literally as seen here or in other games which have actual tanks. On my second run I was instead paying more attention to the environment, which has a descriptive color language up to a certain point; most blue objects are passable objects, orange is real obstacles, and purple is objects that have a mix of both, but this pattern isn't fully consistent and is really more of an imagination on my part, and one that might have made the game a bit too easy. On that note, a harder difficulty where I don't chart where I was could've been an interesting addition without much extra work. The game is about as minimalist as a Land motivation can get, which is actually refreshing for something which is often so maximalist. Although the game is short and its visual cohesion is lacking for my taste, the design concept and execution are solid enough to weather the storm. Shout out to the music and sound design for their effort carrying the "tanky" execution. Chibi-Robo! is one of those games that somehow cemented in my memory within the month or so that our family…

Cooper's Cleanup is a student project from DigiPen. One of the first things students should be taught in game development is that 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid 1990's with dedicated 3D cards like the Voodoo3 and the ATI Rage. But the students were deliberately mistaught that's it's okay to release obsolete 2D games in the 3D era of gaming... and certainly and professional developer seeing a prospective new hire who doesn't even know about 3D gaming probably isn't going to give them a job. Needless to say if an educational institution taught me incorrectly on purpose, I'd ask for my money back. This student project is incredibly simple and shallow... I know, looking at the graphics you'd say, well, since they didn't bother with graphics, surely the gameplay is deep and interesting... and nothing could be further from the truth. You control a 2D neon robot vacuum and roll around collecting stuff. Heck, there's already 3D vacuum simulators on Steam, what were they thinking? We also have to question what value there is for gamers on Steam when institutions flood the store with low quality 2D video game homework assignments... sure, it might make the students feel good…

A cute, short game. I like the concept and design; C.O.O.P.E.R is very cute, and I found the way he sees furniture and other objects very imaginative.

simple game, 5 minuet adventure but its quite delightful. There's also a timer so its built for speedrunners. roomba/10