XBLIG News, Reviews & Previews

Next up is On a Roll from Battenberg Software and as soon as I saw the developer name, I immediately thought of Battenberg Cake, being the porker that I am! However I didn't really expect to see a screenful of the stuff on loading!

Anyway, On a Roll is a single player platform game, which sees you a multicoloured ball with huge having to navigate each level collecting stars and avoiding enemy balls (yes, I know how that sounds) and other obstacles. The levels grouped together into larger levels, the first four being called "Around the Garden", then after that there is "Redbrick Road". The themes of which are based around the names i.e. Around the Garden has a garden theme and Red Brick road has a well, red brick theme.

You are able to despatch the enemies by either jumping on their head as in most platformers or by rolling into them at full speed. There are walls that appear to be curved at the bottom that allow you to roll up them which is quite cool. You are also able to jump as might imagine any good ball with big bulgy eyes can, using any one of the coloured buttons (A, B, X, Y).

The obstacles that you may encounter include spikes, which as you could imagine, if you are a ball filled with air are not an exactly desirable thing to roll into! What happens when you are hit by an obstacle is that you stars drop by 100 and if you have less than 100 stars, you lose one of your lives. You can also fall off of the level - be careful when you see the warning signs.

On a Roll's levels are fairly large and luckily you have checkpoints in the form of what looks like barbers poles, which help in not taking you all the way back to the beginning of the level.

The second level is where things started to get a bit sneaky, as throughout the levels there are trampoline type things that allow you to jump to higher levels, except one I discovered, that sends you at top speed into some spikes! I also managed to find a hidden area which I unintentionally ended up in and noticed that it was noticeable by the slightly lighter colours indicating the path to get there.

To be honest, I found On a Roll to be a fairly tough challenge at first, as I was rolling as fast as I could which is pretty fast once you get the momentum up which takes about what feels like a second! I found that taking things easier and slower allowed me to last a lot longer, but I can see the game being fun played by not taking it easy, but I just need to get a bit more skilled up first.

Level four sees you square off against the first boss and I tell you, I only just made it through by the skin of my teeth after losing about three or four lives! Obviously I was doing something wrong... and that there was the end of "Around the Garden". Shortly afterwards I lost all the remainder of my lives, but luckily, the game allows me to now start on the "Redbrick Road" level.

I'm sure there is a ton of stuff that I have failed to mention in this review, but let me tell you this... if you like fun platformers, you'll probably enjoy this one.