Sometimes all it takes to survive the apocalypse is finding the right friend. Love Bytes is a charming animated sci-fi short film from Sam Prebble that follows Bill, a lonely robot wandering through a post-apocalyptic wasteland in search of happiness, purpose, and some reason to keep moving forward. His journey eventually brings something into his life that he definitely didn’t see coming. Little does he know, he is about to start a very unexpected friendship. It’s a simple hook that gives the film room to explore loneliness, connection, and the strange ways companionship can find us in an increasingly disconnected world.Love Bytes also marks Prebble’s first animated short film, bringing together his experience in game design and visual effects with his lifelong ambition to make movies. That combination gives Bill’s bleak little world plenty of personality while keeping the focus on the emotional core of his unexpected friendship. The result is a sweet and surprisingly heartfelt sci-fi story about a robot searching for something more than mere survival, proving you don’t need a feature-length runtime to make an audience care about a lonely machine trying to find his place in the world.