February 19th, 2023

Beaten 1st time on difficulty – N/A

“Become the bullet hell!”

I swear I saw that quote somewhere within the game, but now I cannot find it. Anyway this quote perfectly encapsulates this game. Your task is pretty simple – survive 30 minutes while leveling up your character to the point it spits out so many projectiles or other means of attack that your enemies have to go through bullet hell to reach you.

Pick your character, kill enemies with starting weapon and around half of enemies drop gems that give you exp. Lvl up, get new weapons from lvl up and new passive skills and repeat that for 30 minutes. That’s how long you have to survive on most of maps. Very simple game.

There’s so much to unblock. There are like 30 characters at least, each one with different starting weapon and quirk. And each one has at least one achievements tied to them. At least 10 different maps with its own achievements and relics to collect. There are also weapon evolutions and unions. It’s also a game where you can turn off all sounds as you don’t need them to play. Perfect game for listening to podcasts or your own music in the background. Although the game has its own OST and it’s not bad from few tracks I heard, I got bored to listening to same tracks over and over on earlier levels.

Game doesn’t look like much but it is a mindless fun once you get the hang of it. It’s cheap and it will run on a potato. It also has soooooo many copies, people quickly tried to copy it once they saw what a success this game was. Nowadays you have clones with mechs in Sci-Fi settings, clones with zombies instead of medieval/gothic creatures, clones with big anime titty girls as your heroine… in 2d, 2.5d or 3d… It’s insane how many copy cats are out there and all of them have very positive reviews from what I saw. But I have no idea what they do differently in terms of gameplay. At the moment Vampire Survivors is the safest pick I think.

But the fact it’s a perfect game for listening music/podcasts carries this game a lot. I started to get bored at around 15h mark and now only start it to keep my hands busy while I listen to something in background. Before that I played it also because I wanted to play it and unlock new stuff but that ended pretty quickly.

Beaten 1st time on difficulty – N/A

You could describe RoA as a mix of marble game and tower defense where enemy AI is actively building defenses to stop you. Your task is to destroy enemy castle gate where enemy commander is hiding and roll over them! The thing is your enemy also has a boulder and you need to defend against their boulder and get them before they get you. You have towers, machines like catapults and trebuchets, armored animals, even air strikes lol. Boulders start with 3 layers, more layers make you slower but deal more damage, less layers make you more nimble but deal less damage to enemy gate and potentially forcing you to do more runs.

Campaign is short and took me 3,5 hours to beat which is a good time because if RoA was longer I would start to get bored. While the levels try to be different, they usually play the same, you roll 3-4 times on the same path smashing or avoiding enemy defenses and hitting the gate until you bust it open. The AI sometimes makes tough defenses and if it does smashing through is usually the best solution. If it doesn’t well just keep rolling. I noticed it wasn’t always building in the same spots when I was replaying levels for extras.

Stopping the enemy is even easier once you figure out what works and especially once you get access to more units. Halfway through the game I was always ahead and only time AI got ahead was because I tried to find keys at the same time. There are three keys in every level and you need like 18 out of 53 I think, to have access to all levels. Getting 18 is very easy, getting all requires some patience and it’s only for completionists like me.

I have mixed feelings about the story, mostly the way it’s portrayed. We play as Sisyphus who had enough of pushing that same boulder every day and decides to use it as a weapon to break the gates of underworld and escape. And so we go through different history periods from ancient Greece to 18th century. We fight and eventually roll over King Leonidas, Napoleon, Maria Antoinette, even the goat from Francisco’s Goya “Witches Sabbath” painting. Between levels we get cutscenes where aforementioned characters get a short intro and are given girly voices, doing silly things, sometimes farting or screaming… Sometimes they are funny, like with annoying Leonardo Da Vinci who breaks the 4th wall, but overall it’s not my type of humor. I saw some people describe it as monty python type of humor. I never saw any Monty Python movies or skits but if that’s their type of humor then it’s pretty lame.

I also happened onto comments stating that this game is much more fun in MP. Well I can't say anything about that because MP is dead, as you could expect from old & unpopular game. I got MP achievements with some random guy but we agreed to do it ASAP and we didn't really play as intended.

I like the idea ACE Team had here, but it feels like it could be much better. Perhaps 2 & 3 improve a lot in that regard? As for this game, I would recommend this on sale and if you like marble games and are open to play one with a twist. Get it on a sale too. I wouldn’t recommend this if you like tower defense though. It’s very basic in that regard and focus is more on attacking.