Rollers of the Realm is an action game that combines the desperate genres of role-playing and pinball. Despite the fact that it might be difficult to imagine the two things working well together, they generally do. However, once you’ve exhausted your pinball skills, the game comes to a frustrating halt.
Party Up, Roll Out takes players on a journey with a group of adventurers in this game. They are referred to by their class rather than by their names: Knight, rogue, healer, etc. The party can grow to include up to ten people, each with their own pinball, and more people can be recruited. Thus, you literally have access to a pinball wizard. Each character has extraordinary capacities, for example the Tracker discontinuously fires bolts at foes. Yes, there are adversaries. Each area is a rather intricate pinball table filled with enemies who try to stymie your progress and breakable objects.
Most adversaries stand set up while your pinball “assaults” by moving into them. Your pinball paddles will become shorter as a result of damage caused by others, like archers, who will alter your trajectory. Characters for pinball come in a variety of sizes and speeds. You’ll need to roll into them with a big, heavy Knight to do the most damage, and then you’ll need a healer to recover, but she doesn’t do much damage. When she hits someone from behind, the Rogue deals more damage and steals money from everyone she comes into contact with. Special abilities include calling in pets (multiball), among others. Each character’s abilities and other attributes can be enhanced by purchasing items. When you lose a ball, a party member is disabled until you can revive them by bouncing off objects and accumulating enough mana.
Rollers of the Realm has charming characters, dialogue, and RPG elements, but your pinball skills are almost entirely required to enjoy it. At best, they are about average. When the game is effective, it is effective. It can be fun to watch the ball roll around the board, bounce off people and objects, and loop through hidden passageways. The game can also become tedious at times when you have to hit particular targets, some of which are moving. For instance, there is a mission in which you must prevent torch bearers from entering the gate; however, the multi-tiered board only allows you to view a certain amount at once. When they start coming in from a different area, there is no warning, and even if you think you have everything under control, you will lose. Your characters must climb towers in a different map by hitting the ivy that grows on its sides. The process isn’t very clear, and the game doesn’t give much advice on it. After bouncing the ball around randomly, I completely by accident came across the ivy rope.
Rolling Aimlessly Rollers of the Realm is a very good pinball game. The characters, each with distinct abilities, speeds, and weights. provide a wide range of options and accommodate the player’s preferences. The levels are nice and complicated, with obstacles like ramps to jump over, barriers to smash, and ponds that slow the ball down. Mana can be stolen from the target by creatures that can be added to the mix.
However, Rollers of the Realm can be harsh. When you lose a level because all of your characters have died and you don’t have enough mana to revive them, you don’t get any money or experience. Some boards have multiple phases, requiring you to begin the area from the beginning from the back. There is no congratulatory “nice try” with partial rewards. Restarting an area due to a split-second event that causes your pinball to sail straight between your paddles is one of the most frustrating things. A straightforward pinball game lacks both a sense of grind and objectives that I must complete or else I will lose the game. In a typical pinball game, objectives are completely optional, and failing to accomplish them is of no consequence.
The entire game comes to a halt if your pinball skills hit a wall. To get more money, you have to go back to old places until you can buy new things. Buying more weapons and gear should theoretically help you get better at the game. Except for the items that reduced mana, I didn’t really notice any difference. When you’re trying to aim a pinball at specific targets and locations, it’s hard to see how your ball is doing more knockdown.
Players of Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebbel’s Dungeon World can still satisfy that same fantasy itch for those of us who are unable to quite leave the sword-and-sorcery fantasy of Dungeons & Dragons.
Characters take on familiar roles in the game: Wizards and criminals and druids, mythical people and dwarves and halflings (public area hobbits for the unenlightened), and so on. The polish of Prison World is in its relative straightforwardness, as Prison World is a ‘Controlled By The End times’ game, (getting from the Distraught Max-style prophetically calamitous pretending game End times World), meaning most of player’s activities are settled by tossing two six-sided dice.