Rock 'n' Roll Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

A great new game

One of the most popular games on our site is Bounce - it's simple, easy on the eye and madly addictive. Rock n Roll falls into the same category. Manoeuvre a ball around ever complicating mazes in a pure made-for-mobile one-thumb experience.

We gave you a sneak preview of Rock n Roll earlier this week and we're pleased to announce the game still has us hooked a few days later. This isn't another Tetris or Bejewelled clone, this is a pretty unique game. If you liked Bounce or the recent SolaRola then you should like this as well.

For whatever ancient and mystical excuse, you control a ball called Rock and must find all the musical notes that are littered throughout the mazes. Being a ball of solid mass (apart from his blinking eyes) Rock has no legs, no moving parts and no movable centre of gravity. In fact, Rock is a bit useless unless he finds himself on a slope or freefalling from space. This is where you come in. You may not be able to control Rock, but you can control his surroundings. With a simple left or right push on your Dpad you can rotate the maze and let gravity and the slopes guide Rock through the levels.

It's a very simple control simple but with all things simple, it can be difficult to master. The first few levels in Quest mode gently steer you through and it is difficult to go wrong in the early levels. It's not long though before the levels start getting tricky. The paths become more convoluted, the musical notes more hidden and you now have enemies to contend with. Do look out for the arrows on the side of the walls that indicate the correct direction (although you can find yourself going round in circles if you are not careful). There are power ups that let you grow in size and make it a little easier to control. They also have the added bonus of acting as an extra life. However, towards the end of the mode, the developers have sneakily designed parts of the levels so that only the slimmed down Rock will fit through and it's time to purposefully get hit by the enemy.

There is a certain retro feel to the game as there are no infinite continues and when all your lives are lost you have to start from the very first level. This may seem like a pain to the newer gamers out there but this is how it used to be in the old days. It's actually a good way to master the fine art of rotation and also unashamedly stretches out the longevity. Rock n Roll also has a separate Timed mode where you can race around a whole new set of levels to get the fastest time. The musical notes have been replaced by time freezing clocks, which don’t need to be collected, and the mode is a pure test of navigating to the finish line as quickly as possible.

The graphics are really cool with three different worlds each with their unique backgrounds and enemies. The music, as we've mentioned before, is suitably rock n roll and for once is a critical part of the game. Add to that an online high score facility and you have pretty much all you could need.