I recently finished up a very peculiar, but thoroughly enjoyable game that goes by the name Chibi-Robo! (The ‘!’ is actually in the title, I’m really not that excited that I finished a game). Chibi-Robo! might be one of the singularly least-violent games that I’ve ever played. Even calling it a “game” is a bit of a stretch.
Your character, appropriately named Chibi-Robo, is a diminutive robot with the goal to make his family happy. How do you make your family happy? By cleaning up stains, picking up trash, and doing ridiculous tasks for the inhabitants of the house. Just the first two tasks alone will take up a significant portion of your time as all the members of the family are complete slobs. There’s mud, sticks, cookie crumbs, candy wrappers, soda cans, and assorted miscellany absolutely everywhere. You’ll gladly clean up every piece of trash and scrub every floor to gain ‘happy points’ and raise your ‘Chibi-Ranking’ to get the carrot dangled in front of your nose since the beginning of the game: to become the number one ranked Chibi-Robo in the world, Super Chibi-Robo.
The house that is your domain is split up into six distinct rooms. Curiously, a bathroom is not one of them. That may not sound like a whole lot, but remember that you are playing the part of a robot that’s only about three or four inches tall. Something as seemingly simple as navigating a staircase becomes nigh-impossible.
The tiny house is chock-full of things to do. It’s quite easy to rack up a dozen or so hours doing silly little side-quests, without touching the main story (yes, there is one). You don’t even have to touch the main story if you don’t want to. Overall, I’d expect the average player to get about 20 hours out of the whole thing.
20 non-violent, making people happy, cleaning the house hours. If this game isn’t family-friendly, I don’t know what is.
i love to play on gamecubes and on psp machines, so addicting ‘