Repair sick robots and contemplate the role of healthcare providers in the deeply textured, pixel art, cyberpunk visual novel All Our Broken Parts

What's up ripperdoc?

All Our Broken Parts is a game that is a lot to take in almost out the gate. It's a cyberpunk visual novel with resplendently detailed pixel art where you play as a robot doctor taking care of other robots, each with their own unique affliction. Oh, and humans have disappeared, the ocean doesn't exist anymore, and after a medical mishap, you've been forced into a tiny clinic with not much going for you.

After a mysterious and atmospheric opening, you fairly quickly come across your first patient. It (everyone is referred to with "it," seemingly implying something of a post-gender world) is a robot like you, but one who draws for living, forced into getting a checkup by its unkind manager. Only inside of its left eye is another sort of consciousness that is entirely dedicated to drawing, meaning it doesn't have to do any of the processing work, just the physical act, a textual and metaphorical representation of generative AI, installed in the name of efficiency.

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The problem it faces is that the eyeball consciousness can't get the colours right, so you have to diagnose the main unit. This brings us to an electrically tactile interface where the back of the given robot's head is opened up for us to diagnose. A wirejack allows us to plug into various sections, so you insert it into the unit's own eye and find that it sees everything in black and white, a normal side effect of having the drawing unit installed. What's abnormal is that the main unit can remember what colours look like, so you inspect its memories to see where specific colours come from.

Tactility continues here, as strips of perforated paper denoting those memories are insertable into a separate machine, reels of film revealing remembrances. You figure out that you need to sever the memory bridge of the main unit so that it can't recall colour any more. It agrees, all so that it can perform better at its place of work. You meet it outside later, the robot's dialogue steeped in regret, but work is work. You feel like crap.

There is so much to unpack here, that I don't really think I have time to totally explore in a single post. The intersection of memory and artistic ambitions being overruled by the need to bring results to your employer. The role the healthcare system has in not offering a solution suitable for the individual's emotional needs, but for their material ones; not getting fired (or in this world, recycled), paying rent. And all of this is wrapped up in such deeply textured pixel art, the feeling of the world compelling emanating from the screen instantly.

I do have some criticisms, amongst all of my appreciation for the themes on display. Some of the dialogue could do with some punching up, the non-diegetic UI feels slightly underdeveloped compared to the diegetic pieces, and the actual repairing process can feel a touch sluggish at times. But all of its positives presented in the demo outweigh the negatives, and have left me hungry for more. You can try out All Our Broken Parts for yourself on Steam right here.