In Kuiper Belt Plaza you play as adorable maintenance robot Scrub. One day, everything is normal. You carry out your allotted cleaning duties and go to sleep. Next thing you know, you’re awoken 20 years later by a loud sound to find an abandoned mall.
Or, not quite abandoned. All the people are gone, true, but the robots were left behind.
First, you decide to check out the source of the noise and find a pilot has crashed their ship into your airlock. Your programming dictates that you give her a hand to get all the parts she needs to get her spaceship up and running again. To do so, you’ll have to explore the mall and meet all of its inhabitants.
It’s these robots that are the game’s driving force. Winding your way up and down the mall escalators you’ll encounter deft, funny writing that imagines what a cyborg civilisation would look like 20 years after the humans they were built to serve suddenly disappeared.
Some stay rigid in their routine, offering only bureaucratic hurdles to getting Santa costumes. Others rebel, like the vending machine who’s determined to never serve another snack. Yet others spend their suddenly empty days stargazing and philosophising.
And Scrub? Scrub just wants to help everyone out.
Kuiper Belt Plaza is available to download for pay what you want on itch.io.
Weekindies is Cliqist’s weekend column focusing on small indie games. You can find all of our Weekindie posts here.
