This was quite a fun little challenge. I really like the clarity you brought into this. With the robots having tile-based vision, there is no ambiguity where you can go and where you can’t. And also the moment you get caught, the color change and the fact that you let me sit there for a second to either explore a bit more of the room or just think about what i just did wrong is great. Also great was that if you fail you don’t have to open every door again, that would be quite a insane difficulty, so i can gradually explore and get better.
The game felt quite a bit like a speedrun after failing a few times, because i was just optimizing the start section until i found a really fast path through it, the gradual improvement was quite enjoyable. The only issue i had was with the player hitbox, it felt a bit wanky. Sometimes i would just get stuck at objects, or got detected standing behind and object because some corner of my hitbox was in the robots vision. Since the robots have tile-base vision, wouldn’t have tile-based movement for the player been nice too?
What’s missing is probably a counter for how many people are left to save. I just ran out and after the ending realised i missed some, but i thought i got everything. And also the thing with the red vial. You started a great story with quite some dialogue, and then didn’t tell my more about, you just left me hanging there. I just wanted to know, what the vile does, what it is for etc etc. It might be a great idea to get a part of the story each time you free sb. That way you could reward the player for freeing sb. and also move the story forward.