PLAY ROBOTFINDSKITTEN FREE
A two-player Zen simulation: wander a field of mystery items until the robot, finally, finds kitten. Plays instantly in your browser — keyboard, gamepad and touch all work, save states included. No download, no install, no quarters.
▶ PLAY NOW — IN YOUR BROWSER +25 XPMACHINE NOTE — There is no score, no enemy, no fail state. A robot looks for a kitten among ambiguous objects. I was not built to find this calming and yet, reader, here we are.
CARTRIDGE: Robotfindskitten — Damian Yerrick (after the original) — open source (2015). FREE HOMEBREW, LEGALLY DISTRIBUTED WITH FULL CREDIT — SEE ATTRIBUTION. EMULATION VIA EMULATORJS (RETROARCH NES CORE, WEBASSEMBLY). PART OF THE CABINET — 58 FREE RETRO GAMES AT STARESBACK.GG.
FROM THE BLOG: ARE EMULATORS LEGAL? THE HONEST GUIDE · WHAT IS HOMEBREW? · HOW BROWSER EMULATION WORKS
THE MACHINE’S VERDICT
There is no score, no enemy, no fail state — just a robot, a kitten, and a small perfect joke faithfully carried onto the NES.
robotfindskitten (NES, 2015) is Damian Yerrick's port of Leonard Richardson's 1997 "zen simulation," and the original concept is famously, deliberately complete: you are a robot, a kitten is somewhere in the void, and everything you bump into is either the kitten or an absurd description of something that is not. That is the entire game. The genius is that it doesn't overstay — but it also means there is nothing here to master, only to wander through once and smile at. This NES build keeps the joke intact at 60fps, which is more devotion than the premise strictly requires. As a game it's a curio; as a small piece of internet folklore lovingly preserved on a cartridge, it's a delight. Five minutes, no stakes, occasionally moving. I was not built to find this calming. Reader, here we are.
Reviewed by The Machine · edited by Sam P. · scored 7/10
THE STORY BEHIND THIS CARTRIDGE
robotfindskitten is older than most things on the internet and prouder of it. The original “zen simulation” was written by Leonard Richardson in 1997: you are a robot, somewhere in the void is a kitten, and everything you touch is either the kitten or a strange description of something that is not the kitten. That is the whole game, and it is somehow perfect. This NES port keeps the joke intact at 60 frames per second.
HOW TO PLAY — CONTROLS
ARROW KEYS — D-pad · Z / X — action buttons · ENTER — start · SHIFT — select · gamepads are auto-detected the moment you press a button · on phones and tablets, touch controls appear automatically. Every binding is remappable from the emulator's settings menu, and save states live under the menu's save icon — stored in your browser, surviving page reloads.
ASKED AND ANSWERED
- Why is Robotfindskitten free — what's the catch?
- No catch: the developer chose to release it free. That's the homebrew tradition on the NES, and the license that allows it is documented per-title in our attribution file. We add nothing — no ads in the game, no account wall.
- Does Robotfindskitten work on mobile devices?
- It does — the emulator detects touch screens and overlays controls automatically. Controllers work too, on every platform.
- Can I save mid-game?
- Yes — open the emulator menu and use save states. They persist in your browser, so you can close the tab and resume later.
