''robotfindskitten'' (''rfk'') is a " Zen simulation", originally written by Leonard Richardson for MS-DOS.

Game

It is a

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video game with an ASCII interface in which the user (playing the eponymous robot and represented by a number sign "") must find kitten (represented by a random character) on a field of other random characters. Walking up to items allows robot to identify them as either kitten, or any of a variety of "Non-kitten Items" (NKIs) with whimsical, strange or simply random text descriptions. It is not possible to lose (though there is
patch
that adds a 1 in 10 probability of the NKI killing robot).

Simon Carless Simon Carless is a video game industry businessperson and former game designer and editor. Simon is the founder of GameDiscoverCo, a video game discoverability consultancy firm, and previously worked overseeing the worldwide Game Developers Confere ...

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". The original ''robotfindskitten'' program was the sole entrant to a contest in 1997 at the now-defunct webzine '' Nerth Pork'' — the object: create a depiction of "robotfindskitten". (The ''robotfindskitten'' concept was originally created by Jacob Berendes, but the only submission he received depicted kittens meeting an untimely end at the hands of malevolent robots.) When the author rewrote the program for Linux in 1999, it gained popularity and now has its own website and

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s. Since then, it 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 Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

, and many more. Graphical versions, such as an

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version with emblazoned on an otherwise featureless cube, also exist. Remakes of it are also used as programming tutorials, such as for Gambas.

References

External links

*{{cite web, url=http://robotfindskitten.org/, title=''robotfindskitten''... helping robots find kittens since 1997, publisher=robotfindskitten.org, accessdate=2014-06-09
''robotfindskitten'' in a Java appletFictional Back-story to the game, detailing robot's creation"The Ultimate ''robotfindskitten'' Fan Site"
on the original author's web site 1997 video games Amiga games Android (operating system) games Apple II games Commodore 64 games DOS games Dreamcast homebrew games Game Boy Advance games Free and open-source Android software Java platform games Linux games Open-source video games Palm OS games Unix games Video games developed in the United States Video games with textual graphics ZX Spectrum games