This logic puzzler from Luis Díaz Peralta tasks you with feeding some demanding robots at a Sushi restaurant.
You may not expect robots to be particularly fussy, if at all interested, in the culinary delight often found in eating sushi — but in Sushi for Robots, the droids not only care about the quality of this Japanese dish, they're outright snobbish connoisseurs.
There's no room for ambiguity with a title like Sushi for Robots — created by Spanish game designer Luis Díaz Peralta, this puzzler presents a quirky little challenge in which you have to ensure the right sushi dish gets to the correct, demanding robot.
This plays out by you having to place some stickers on or near the Sushi restaurant conveyer belt, hitting go, and seeing what happens, before the conveyer shuts off.
If you get things right, you have some happy bots, and you can progress to the next puzzle, get it wrong however, and the droids get a touch irate, and you try again. Beyond the robots having a brief tantrum, the game is fairly laid back — it's one where you will need to experiment, try your ideas out, and iterate until you find the right solution.
All of your puzzle solving is done in a way in which you aren't punished if you get it wrong — there's no life system or countdown timer to worry about here. The only limiting factor is the number of 'moves' you can take with each puzzle — it's a par score system here, get the puzzle solved in a set number of moves, and if you use less that's a bonus.
Of course, as things progress new puzzle mechanics are introduced, taking things up a notch in terms of the difficulty. These new gameplay functions are introduced by way of new modifying stickers to place on the sushi-go-round.
Some of these modifiers are straightforward enough to grasp — they may change the direction the dishes go around the conveyor, or change the dish altogether for example. Other stickers are a bit more involved, and may limit how many times a certain action can be taken, or even move sushi plates around the level via portals.
Your proclivity for spacial, logic puzzlers will determine just how much enjoyment you get out of Sushi for Robots. It's a straightforward enough concept to get to grips with, but will soon have you head scratching as you stare at the puzzle in front of you, mulling over how best to approach it.
There's just over 60 sushi robot encounters to solve here.
Overall, Sushi for Robots presents a neat little puzzle package — one that's uncomplicated at first, but soon presents a thorny challenge. Thankfully though it doesn't really penalise you for making errors, and as such is an approachable puzzler with a modest amount of charm.
Sushi for Robots is out now, and a demo is also available on Steam.
