[XBLA] Rotastic Review

[DoctorFinger]

Rotastic Review

Title - Rotastic
Platform - Xbox Live Arcade. Coming next year to PSN & PC.
Developer - Dancing Dots
Publisher - Focus Home Interactive
ESRB Rating - T (Teen)
MSRP - 800 MSP ($10)
Editor - Michael "DoctorFinger" Chauvet

What's Hot: Simple but engrossing puzzle gameplay. Great difficulty range.

What's Not: The lack of online multiplayer is a bit disappointing.

Puzzle games have a tough road to hoe. They have to be simple enough to be accessible, but challenging enough to keep you coming back. The developers of the new action-puzzler Rotastic know that, and they do a great job of balancing accessibility and challenge.

The concept of Rotastic is almost painfully simple. You swing. No, not the Bunga-Bunga sort of swinging. Your character - you can choose a viking, a wereboar, Death himself or Legolas Legalos the elf - is dropped onto a level and all you can do is swing from your magical rope. You swing around from point to point, capturing gems or completing other objectives. And that’s pretty much it. The whole game is played using only two buttons: any of the face buttons to activate the rope, or the bumpers to change the direction of your swing. Neither analog stick nor the D-pad do anything in the game. But just because the controls are simple doesn’t mean the game is.

An example of the (not so) simple swinging mechanics

In the beginning the objectives are very simple. Grab all of the gems from a level, then swing through the exit door. But as you progress the challenge slowly but surely begins to ramp up. You’re scored on each level, and given medals - actually in Rotastic they give you bronze, silver, gold or platinum helmets, but you get the idea - based on that score. You need a certain number of helmets to open up new worlds, so you have an incentive beyond bragging rights to try harder on levels. Starting with the tricks. Doing figure eights, J-turns or other complex moves gives you bonuses, some of which can be huge. Tricks also rebuild your shield, which becomes very important once the obstacles start popping up. Or once you start getting into battles (more on those later). In no time at all the levels get much more complex and correspondingly more difficult. Simple rings of gems around swing points become major geometric structures surrounded by wheels of spinning death. Later levels also introduce different goals, like smashing blocks, flipping switches or simply surviving for a designated period of time. You’ll soon find yourself forgetting about trying for high scores and simply playing for survival. There are a couple of levels so tough I couldn’t even finish them, but thankfully the game lets you skip the occasional stage.

A figure-eight, known in this game as a ‘Rotastic’

The battles are the biggest departure in the game. It’s you against up to 3 opponents, either in a race to 50 gems, or a deathmatch where kills count. You get ‘kills’ but cutting the ropes of opponents or bouncing them into traps. These battles are very frantic, and take a bit of getting used to, especially the deathmatches. Unfortunately the multiplayer is only available locally, and the AI has some obvious patterns. The addition of online play would have pushed the game even higher, and it’s omission is disappointing.

A boar fighting two vikings and a skeleton. Makes perfect sense

Score: (4 out of 5 Cogs)


Michael says, "Rotastic is a virtual must own for fans of puzzle games. It’s simple concept quickly adds levels of complexity and difficulty which will keep you coming back for more. The only major disappointment is the lack of online play for multiplayer."

[EternalGamer]

I watched the 20 minute Giant Bomb quick look and it looked terribly repetitive and like a far too limited concept to base an entire game around. Their consensus was that it was $10 rip off that look like a flash game. Vinny at one point tried to say something kind of nice and Ryan interrupted him and said "Do not make apologies for Rotastic."

The video was worth a few laughs, anyway.

[DoctorFinger]

I'll admit that at first it looked like a Flash game. But it really is a lot of fun, and gets very challenging in later levels.

[Ink Asylum]

This looks like it'd work great on iOS.