robotfindskitten is a free video game originally written by Leonard Richardson for MS-DOS. The game uses ASCII interface in which the player, as the eponymous robot and represented by a number sign "", must find a kitten (represented by a random character) on a field of other random characters.

Gameplay

Walking up to items allows robot to identify them as either kitten, or any of a variety of "non-kitten items" with whimsical, strange, or random text descriptions. It is not possible to lose (though there is a patch that adds a 1 in 10 probability of the item killing the robot). Simon Carless has characterized robotfindskitten as "less a game and more a way of life ... It's fun to wander around until you find a kitten, at which point you feel happy and can start again".

Ports

The game has been ported to and/or implemented on over 30 platforms, including POSIX, the Dreamcast, Palm OS, TI-99/4A, the Z-machine, the Sony PSP, Android, and many more. Graphical versions, such as an OpenGL version with emblazoned on an otherwise featureless cube, also exist. Remakes are also used as programming tutorials, such as for Gambas.

In a 2023 study on automated translation of C programs into Rust, robotfindskitten was used as a benchmark program for the translation tools C2Rust and Crown. The study reported that the game's source code contains one raw pointer declaration but no raw pointer uses.

References

  • robotfindskitten in a Java applet
  • Fictional Back-story to the game, detailing robot's creation
  • "The Ultimate robotfindskitten Fan Site" on the original author's web site
  • A robotfindskitten-inspired challenge in code golf at Stack Exchange