RUMU is a simple little walking simulator about a sentient Roomba and a smarthouse AI. You are Rumu, a little vacuum cleaner. Your purpose is to clean… and to love. You are assured that the humans who own you, Cecily and David, love you, but, alas, you don’t get to see them – instead, you vacuum the house while they’re away, and then go into sleep mode when they’re home.
Or do you?RUMU is a simple little walking simulator about a sentient Roomba and a smarthouse AI. You are Rumu, a little vacuum cleaner. Your purpose is to clean… and to love. You are assured that the humans who own you, Cecily and David, love you, but, alas, you don’t get to see them – instead, you vacuum the house while they’re away, and then go into sleep mode when they’re home.
Or do you?
This is a very simple game; it has extremely simple puzzles, and its primary appeal is the unfolding narrative, told via a combination of conversations with Sabrina, the smart house AI, and environmental storytelling. It’s obvious from the very beginning that something is right – that there’s some REASON why it is that you can’t see your human family, who you are programmed to love, despite having never seen them – and the whole of the game is spent trying to find out why it is that you never see them, what it is that Sabrina is trying to keep away from you, and the life and family drama surrounding the humans who made you.
The actual gameplay here is nothing to write home about – you drive around, you click on stuff to interact with it, you drive over stuff on the floor to clean it up/pick it up. The main attraction here is the story, and the mystery of why it is you’re not seeing the humans who you’re supposed to be cleaning up after, and why the smart house AI is keeping you out of various parts of the house.
And in that regard, the game succeeds reasonably well. I spent the first half of the game speculating about what had happened, and as the game went on, the possibilities got narrowed down until I finally learned what happened towards the end of the game.
I’d say the biggest knock against the game is in the pacing; the first half of the game is reasonably paced, but as you get towards the end, the mystery is resolved but the game acts as if it is not. This results in a disconnect between the player and the game, because it feels like the game is belaboring the point – we want to move on to the consequences and fallout, but the game is instead stretching out “the reveal” well past the point where we know what happened.
Overall, though, I liked this game. I spent a fair bit of the first half of it laughing about it and talking about it with a friend, then focused on finishing it after they went to bed. It’s not very long – about three hours if you’re just playing it through – but I got it on sale for under $3, so it’s hard to argue that I somehow didn’t get good value. The game was entertaining, gave me fun things to think about and talk about, and made me smile, and in the end, what more can you really ask for?
If you’re into narrative-focused games, then this game might be worth taking a shot at – it’s presently on sale for under $3 USD, and for a few hours of my time, I got something that I’ll remember. If you are primarily focused on games that focus on gameplay, however, you’d best steer clear.… Expand
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