Haiku, the Robot is a metroidvania style game being solo developed by Jordan Morris of Mister Morris Games, based out of Tallinn, Estonia; featuring an amazing soundtrack by Guy Jones. Jordan Morris is a self taught pixel artist and animator with a background of 4 years in project planning and execution for an IT software company — he knows where he is going and how to get there — and I am excited for it.

The demo showed one of the many different levels in the post human world of Haiku: exploring the world with eerie, somber background music that felt isolating in a way that I haven't enjoyed in a solo adventure in a long time. The hack and slash mechanics that ooze “big protagg energy” juxtaposing the dangers of the enemies you come across: each hand drawn and animated to give plenty of character and personality. Starting appropriately lacking in many abilities and ways to defend oneself, I quickly dove into exploring every corner and crevice I could, with well spaced rewards for my wanderings between the power ups and new skills to dink around with. A definite bonus was a similar “QWER” keyboard control layout for abilities. Being a MOBA gamer, this made the transition near seamless.

If you are a fan of platformers, this is definitely one to add to the list of classics.

The game was put up on Kickstarter on September 7th, and will close on October 9th, 2020, with the estimated delivery of rewards for the different tiers available in October 2021. It will be found on Steam, available for Windows, Apple, and was approved for the Switch.

You can back the Kickstarter project here.