Introducing Robotopia: A 3D, First-Person, Talking Simulator
A new 3D genre has been born that immerses players in role-play without dialog trees.
Tomato Cake Inc., founded by Tommaso Checchi and Coleman Andersen, has just revealed their 3D talking simulator: Robotopia. It uses LLM-powered NPC’s to create hilarious and emergent fun that wasn’t previously possible in video games. The founders have just come out of stealth after over a year of hard work. They were quietly showcasing their EGG-funded prototype at DICE last year, earning multiple inbound offers. Then at GDC, they had a bunch of meetings, were asked to give a tech talk at OpenAI and just days after presenting at EGG’s First Demo Day, they closed a deal on favorable terms and went right back to development. Now after a lot of hard work, they have publicly revealed the trailer below.
The Founders
At the end of 2023 my wife and I met Tommaso and Coleman through mutual friends (shout outs to David Hodge and Ian Glow). Robotopia’s rumored world of talking robots sounded intriguing but we knew we’d have to see a demo live. There were a growing number of LLM-powered NPC pitches popping up and nearly all of them were either too ambitious to be feasible or utter slop. No one seemed to be thoughtfully using the technology in a way that would actually resonate with gamers.
We flew to Seattle to meet the founders and learned that Tommaso had ported Minecraft to mobile for Mojang while also building their UGC marketplace (Tommaso and I also realized we had met once before in 2015 when Mojang hosted Humble Bundle in Stockholm for lunch after our Mojam co-promotion). He had more recently gone on to make VR gaming content at Meta and then engineered simulations for testing AI models at a friend’s startup. But after many years working for others he had decided it was time to start his own studio.
Coleman had gone to NYU Tisch and studied procedural story telling. His screenplays participated in oscar-qualifying film festivals. He had already taught himself to code and was taking charge of player experience and dynamic narrative construction in the game. Robotopia was the perfect project for him to apply all of his skills in this new digital frontier for entertainment.
The two had known each other for some time through the Seattle game development community and their shared interests plus complementary skillsets seemed like the ideal founder origin story. Now it was time to see the prototype.
The Proof of Concept
The build that day was super early. The environments were made out of gray boxes and one generic robot model was the stand-in for every character. But this was due to the guys focusing entirely on proving the gameplay mechanics and finding the fun (something EGG believes in strongly). They had just added several new features before we arrived and now needed twenty minutes to stabilize the build. We looked over their shoulder as they patched everything up in Unity. Tommaso got it compiling and slid the laptop in front of me. “Push spacebar to talk,” he said.
Instantly, my mind flashed back to Portal 2 released in 2011. The game’s introductory scene is a robot companion giving you a check up. He invites you to push spacebar to talk… but instead you jump (like you’d expect to do in every FPS game) and then he laughs at you and implies you have severe brain damage.
No one was joking now, these guys had built the future… I walked toward the nearest robot and got ensnared in a trap. I looked my captor in the eyes and pushed spacebar. This was my chance to negotiate my release… but as a policy I don’t typically negotiate with robo-terrorists. So I ignored every in-game hint about how to conduct diplomacy and defiantly insulted my captor’s appearance. He returned fire with a witty repartee about MY appearance (he called me a shaved monkey), told me I had failed to prove my innocence and then dropped a panel of spikes on my head and I was dead.
It took me a moment to appreciate what had just happened. No dialog trees, almost no latency, just immersive, back and forth banter with NPC’s. My voice was now the controller and the limits on what I could say were now my own imagination. I replayed the scenario several more times enjoying varying results.
There were several other test levels too: a dark and dangerous labyrinth solved by convincing a robot with a light to follow me (but I could troll the bot by convincing him to walk off a cliff instead). There was a creepy robot chef who wouldn’t let me leave before giving me a cheeseburger and demanding to know what I thought about it. I got stuck in a jail cell where I had to convince my robot cell mate to say a forbidden word that would cause him to explode and set me free.
An hour flew by and despite incomplete assets and game-crashing bugs… the player experience was intuitive and fun. Olga and I decided to offer Tomato Cake Inc. prototype funding. Our deal was signed over Wise Sons pastramis on rye at GDC ‘24.
The Why
Tommaso eloquently explains his motivations for making the game in his four minute Robotopia pitch from EGG’s Demo Day last year. I recommend everyone take a moment to watch below.
Dungeons & Dragons brought the concept of role playing games to wider audiences when it launched in 1974. Then the advent of computer games allowed for automation and streamlining of RPG concepts in compelling and approachable ways. But due to the limits of computers, video games have historically confined players to an RPG experience that feel vastly restricted when compared to the open possibilities of pen and paper D&D with a human game master.
Robotopia is using modern technology to change this.
The Content
Tommaso and Coleman are seeking a golden middle between procedural sandboxing and pre-scripted storytelling.
Most games that try to use LLM’s fall out of alignment with the sweet spot. They are either too sandboxy and nonsensical such that the player is presented with an unenjoyable mess, or they portray a high-fidelity world and great graphics but now the limited condition of LLM technology itself will be too silly and unreliable to hold up to player expectations.
Robotopia presents a high-detail, 3D world to players with cityscapes to explore and beautiful art direction.
But meanwhile, the failed “robot utopia” underneath its shiny exterior is drenched in cringiness and derpy-ness. The robots are all fatally flawed and limited and thus will completely align with the actual limitations of LLM’s in 2026.
The key insight that Tommaso and Coleman have discovered for their design is “Yes and…”. They want to provide high level structure and player motivation but then allow for dialog sandboxes in which the player can MacGyver multiple unique paths to success. When done well, it feels a bit like Dishonored or Deus Ex but with “verbal combat” instead of physical combat.
I won’t say much more about specific levels in the latest build but when a playable is ready, we’d love to have people sign up and try it. You can be one of the first to check it out by joining the Robotopia Discord.
The Community
I think streamers and YouTubers will find Robotopia inviting. Instead of the usual burden of having to put on a performance for their community on top of playing the game…. playing Robotopia ALREADY IS a performance. Influencers can bring their lovable personas in-engine, right into the game itself and interact directly with the world’s characters.
When each play-through is unique, every session is its own little easter egg that might be worth sharing on social media. It reminds me very much of emergent player moments you typically see from wildly successful studios like Landfall Games.
Additionally, Tommaso and Coleman have built a suite of tools that allow them to rapid-prototype custom levels and robots. They still have work to do, but their plan is to put the same level-building tools that Tomato Cake Inc. uses internally into the hands of their community so they can make their own content.
It should be a target-rich environment for the creation of joyful memes on social media.
The Future
Robotopia is a compelling v1.0 for AI-powered, emergent story telling in 2026. I have never seen anything like it in my many travels and conversations.
As AI technology advances, Tommaso and Coleman will continue to explore new and different ways to build experiences for their community. EGG is excited to be on this journey with them. Congrats Tomato Cake Inc. on your funding, your game announcement and I can’t wait to show more of your work as you get further along!