Rolla Review – All You Can Eat Destruction

Bwahahahaha! That’s precisely the sound that was coming out of my mouthhole each time I ran through ROLLA, from Tyrmä Games, followed by plenty of fiendish grins and achy thumbs.

That one’s on me, as I was playing this mostly on my Retroid Nova via DroidDeck (hint, hint), and the sticks are awful when rolling as I did.

But what, Sir Knight, is the rolling all about? Surely, you’ve heard of the classic, The Blob? Kaiju? Carrion? Katamari? Pop culture? Earth?! If you know the latter, well… it’s doomed.

That doom is not the dread from your news feeds, but the blob you play in ROLLA. It’s a huge pulsating mass that’s escaped captivity and is wreaking havoc by smashing through structures, eating people and growing to colossal sizes all for the sake of having a better score than a stranger.

Not Exactly Brain Surgery

All you need to do is steer into buildings, vehicles and people to reach ultimate annihilation and upload your high score to the online leaderboards. Even better, it’s automated, so no manual uploading of a csv data file. It’s so clever!

Seriously though folks, ROLLA is incredibly simplistic, and I must spell out to you that R-O-L-L-A isn’t an RPG, rogue-like or idler that can sit on your desk and evolve. It’s fast and furious, pick-up-and-play, and no brains – seemingly like the blob.

That’s not a slur in the slightest, as that’s what makes the game so fun. Each stage starts the same: get big, destroy everything. As the costs increase to repair the damage, higher levels of human threat arrive.

This starts with police shooting at you with their toy guns, with each hit bringing your size down. Simply roll into them or press the grab button to reach out with tentacles and swallow them whole!

The Humans Fight Back

Naturally, we don’t like that in humanity, so the big boys roll in. This includes tanks, rocket launchers and air strikes, which can sometimes insta-kill you. This makes ROLLA all the more entertaining in terms of challenge and not just mindless rolling.

Essentially, it’s a survival game and about lasting long enough to conquer. Aside from gigantic crushing proportions, Blobby can collect power-ups that include deflections to protect you from projectiles, plus lots more.

However, the real meat and potatoes of ROLLA are the challenges. Collect letters à la Tony Hawk to spell R-O-L-L-A, destroy a certain percentage of the city, eat so many humans… Like Blobby, the challenges evolve and get more challenging.

At first, these can seem unattainable as you don’t carry power-ups over or raise your stats; instead, you start each run through each city afresh. Through practice, you learn the routes and strategies on how to collect everything, then the endgame trickles down to scores.

Just Roll With It

I’m a skirt chaser, not a score chaser – and even that’s not true. I wanted to fit in and be cool. Reviewing games early is great, as you can top the leaderboards when nobody else knows about it. When is the game release? And then? Back to the shadows of anonymity.

Still, that doesn’t put me off, as the sheer pick-up-and-play aspect of ROLLA, the enjoyment factor, score-chasing, and having a desire to watch a batch of B-movies. So go forth, roll hard, and try not to break your thumbs.