Rolando for iPhone Review



Posted: Tuesday, May 26, 2009

by Dan Fletcher
Dan Fletcher

Rolando is a quirky combination of platforming and puzzle solving, as you attempt to lead the Rolandos and their royalty, the prince and rather gluttonous king, to safety. Though Rolando is hailed as a physics game, which may scare some gamers off, as the iPhone has been inundated with such games of late, I found Rolando to have puzzles more typical of a traditional platformer. Youll spend much of the game commanding your various, multi-talented Rolandos to hit switchs, launch catapults, activate teleporters, and blast bombs to open up passages and move Rolandos around the map as needed.

Not only do you have to deal with the environment itself, but ghostly enemies also populate the levels, and must be bypassed or destroyed to move on. These enemies all move in slow and methodical patterns, which is how Rolando itself should be played. The levels are small, yet intricate and varied enough to give you pause for thought on how best to cross them. Rolandos do not move around on their own, save for the prince, who will bolt off heedlessly into danger unless being blocked by another Rolando.

Rolando is a complex game, each level requiring numerous tasks to be completed and puzzles to solve before all the Rolandos can reach the end. Each level must be completed with a certain number of Rolandos reaching the end to claim victory, and while this target is generally rather generous, theres definite incentive to play through the game a second time and try to minimize Rolando casualties.

There are also gems scattered throughout the levels, as well as a time limit to beat which rewards achievements, but these should be saved for a second playthrough. You have to move the Rolandos to win this game. They can be controlled by the tilt function as well as the touch screen option. Select them by touching them and move them by tilting the screen. You can select multiple units by dragging your finger on the screen when touching it. If you want them to jump ledges, you could flick your finger and watch them move up obstacles. Ignore the prince and the king at your own peril. The king cannot move unless helped by Rolandos while the prince can run off leaving you fuming at his stupidity.

Rolandos art style is the one area of the game I find fault with. Its not terrible by any means, and some levels look much better than others, but I find the minimalist, artsy approach to graphics that Rolando and many other games use, is just not appealing to me. It almost feels like a cop-out, like the developer doesnt feel like trying to create detailed graphics, so theyll go for the surreal approach instead. The levels are often fairly barren, with drab backgrounds and too much use of single colour schemes to fill in large portions of the level. The Rolandos on the other hand are slightly better, with more varied colours and good animation.

Rolando has a perfect difficulty curve, beginning nice and simple, and slowly introducing more and more puzzles until it really gets down to business with levels that can prove quite tricky. Trying to unlock all the achievements could keep you busy for months, but even a single playthrough will take a good 6-10 hours, depending on your pace. Rolando is a great game that fans of quirky games and platformers/puzzlers should absolutely pick up. Score: 9/10

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