Rotastic – Review (XBLA)
| Game Name: | Rotastic |
| Platforms: | Xbox 360 (XBLA) |
| Publisher(s): | Focus Home Interactive |
| Developer(s): | Dancing Dots |
| Genre(s): | Puzzle Platformer |
| Release Date: | Available Now |
| ESRB Rating: | Teen |
On the surface, Rotastic may share a few similarities to some of it’s Xbox Live Arcade brethren, but the simple control scheme soon gives way to clever mechanics that set it apart in the puzzle genre. Combining the charmingly gory art style of Castle Crashers, with the one button play style of Splosion Man, Rotastic is a delightful puzzle platformer from developer Dancing Dots. Easy to learn but dificult to master doesn’t even begin to tell you about my experience with this game. What starts out as a simplistic gem gathering adventure, quickly turns into a challenging and devious puzzle game of wits and hand eye coordination.
You start off controlling a small viking who is tasked with the simple goal of “Get Everything”, by the disembodied voice of the games announcer. As you drop into the field of play, you only need to press the A button to leash yourself on to floating pegs that are surrounded by multicolored gems. Momentum makes you swing back and forth from peg to peg like a Bionic Commando with a hunger for precious stones. Early levels have you collecting a certain amount of gems to open up the exit portal and move to the next board while slowly introducing other mechanics such as using the bumpers to change momentum direction, and how to score bonuses by doing figure eights and collecting like colored gems in succession.
Rotastic features 70 levels, across 7 worlds and each puzzle has a gold, silver and bronze helmet to earn. You need to accumulate a certain amount of helmets to proceed to the next world, so some backtracking is in order if your current scores are not up to snuff. After completing each level your high score is measured against your friends immediately, so for high score junkies like me, that’s also a plus. Once you get past the first world, Rotastic starts to get challenging. Death traps in the form of flaming walls, buzzing chainsaws and boss battles start to appear, and it’s a race against time to not only get the best possible score, but to even survive the level with the 5 lives that you have for each puzzle.
Smartly, the developers are constantly breaking up the action by throwing different types of levels at you so as not to build monotony. You may have to maneuver around the aforementioned death traps, smash your viking against blocks, fling yourself against sticky walls while avoiding fire, or have a one on one battle against an AI opponent with the added pressure of a constantly ticking down clock. In a world where most puzzle games boil down to match 3 or more gems, it’s a nice change to see someone doing something different with the puzzle genre.
After completing the meaty single player campaign, there is some replay value in single screen only multiplayer. You can have up to 3 friends join in the fun for some competitive couch co-op, but the lack of online multiplayer is unfortunate. There are additional avatars to unlock if the starting viking is not to your liking, and you can always go back to better your scores which you need to do to get a specific achievement for getting all the gold helmets. If your looking for a fun puzzle game that separates itself from the pack with cartoon violence, challenging level design and a steep difficulty curve, Rotastic is the game for you. At only 800 points on Xbox Live Arcade, this is one title that is hard to pass up. Rotastic earns a solid 4 out of 5 stars.
