Rollers of the Realm

 PC
Rollers of the Realm Image
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Mixed or average reviews - based on 19 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
7.3

Mixed or average reviews- based on 30 Ratings

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  • Summary: Rollers of the Realm is set in an era of medieval lands, corrupt kings, and castles of days gone by with a twist: bounce on and attack enemies as a pinball. Your characters are the balls.

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Rollers of the Realm: Teaser Trailer

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 19
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 19
  3. Negative: 1 out of 19
  1. GamingTrend
    Nov 26, 2014
    90
    It’s an enormously fun and creative take on two genres you would never think to see in bed together. The gameplay is tight and responsive, the boards are intricate and clever, and the splendid voice acting is an added delight.
  2. Digitally Downloaded
    Nov 24, 2014
    80
    With plenty of levels, several endless modes and multiple characters, there's a lot of replay value to be had in Rollers of the Realm. The relatively toned back violence makes this a game I'd readily recommend to younger audiences, and the story is very good on the inclusivity front with representation for characters of various races, genders and ages.
  3. Twinfinite
    Jan 6, 2015
    80
    Rollers of the Realm gets points for its unique play style and responsive, approachable play. It’s definitely not an easily mastered mix of genres, but it’s well-done enough that it takes more skill and concentration than it does luck.
  4. Hardcore Gamer
    Nov 23, 2014
    70
    With a bit more polish and tweaking, Rollers of the Realm would stand out for more than its genre mixing.
  5. Shacknews
    Dec 8, 2014
    70
    Rollers of the Realm, by most respects, is an excellent pinball and RPG hybrid. However, it takes a great amount of skill and no small share of luck to get through it.
  6. We Got This Covered
    Dec 30, 2014
    60
    A fantastic concept that is never lived up to. It’s definitely more pinball than RPG, and bravely strides into uncharted territory, but I’m not sure who I would recommend it to. Pinball fans have dedicated games that are vastly superior, and RPG fans are going to find the offering meager at best. Right now, it just sits in some strange limbo.
  7. GameSpot
    Nov 24, 2014
    40
    Its flaws are too numerous, and its strengths seldom manage to work in concert. The end result is more disappointing than it is entertaining, which is a real pity if it means another 25-year delay before someone takes the next crack at doing the concept justice.

See all 19 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 6
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 6
  3. Negative: 0 out of 6
  1. Insert_Coin
    Nov 24, 2014
    10
    While it is common to develop a somewhat decent product with little to low appeal, few Indie developers can say they’ve aimed for a high levelWhile it is common to develop a somewhat decent product with little to low appeal, few Indie developers can say they’ve aimed for a high level of polish and have successfully surpassed every expectation. I highly recommend this wonderful, unique experience to anyone who falls under either, or both, genres this game sets out to be: a Pinball RPG.

    1. Gameplay & Story
    2. Graphics & Visuals
    3. Music & Sound
    4. Replay & Extras
    5. Is this game for you?

    1. Gameplay & Story
    There is, indeed, a story from beginning to end. The introduction tells a tale of war, survival, and prophecy. As most highly acclaimed titles, the story and game progression come hand in hand. There are various ACTS in the game, each offering STAGES with unique, entertaining challenges. Some range from “defeat all enemies” to “find the exit”. Each character is a ball and you can switch them on the fly by “cradling” them in your main flippers. This adds variety and strategy, especially if you choose to revisit a stage to grind for gold or XP. As you progress through the game you gain more allies, who all have pros and cons similar to any traditional RPG roster (Rogue, Healer, Knight, etc.). You can slightly move your character as he/she is on the play field. The Knight is heavier, so he is harder to control but strikes like a beast. The Rogue is smaller and agile, so you can almost completely curve the trajectory of her launch. Clever puzzles include holding a flipper to allow your ball to pass under it, or bumping torches with your ball to light a room. The game mechanics run deeper as the story progresses, from your flippers having HP, managing your Mana to either resurrect fallen allies or activate special abilities, or hiring an additional character (in other words, purchasing an additional life). Learning the mechanics as the game progresses is part of the fun, so I won’t spoil any further details.

    2. Graphics & Visuals
    Rollers is a beautiful blend of comic-panel illustrations (cinematics) and a deep, fully realized world developed in 3D, presented in an over-head pinball perspective. Enhanced by music and sound, the visual experience brings you into a realm of wild animals, kingdoms, war and tyranny. Dark dungeons and caves are hard to see, only to be lit by torches when activated. The artists must have had a lot of fun creating logs, trees, rocks, land and architecture, all playing an important role in these pinball mazes. Make a quick Internet search and you will see the stunning environments, lighting and effects for yourself, all at a buttery-smooth 60fps.

    3. Music & Sound
    Epic scores fill the game, beginning with a heroic theme drawing you in at the title screen. Long-awaited battles, celebration and excitement are met with grand reprises. There is a strong cast of characters with full, convincing voice-overs that bring the characters to life. Not only are the actors amazing, I need to hand it to the casting director who did a brilliant job. Each character has a distinguishable ethnicity, age and backstory that you can tell just from the voice alone, from a middle-aged monk to an older alchemist.

    4. Replay & Extras
    Each stage can be revisited for various “set ups”. Perfect for RPG fans who love to grind for XP and loot. Many stages have hidden keys, which unlocks a hidden treasure. If you’re looking to unlock everything in the game, there are characters to hire, items to purchase and equip, and challenges to clear, unlocking even more items. Everything you unlock enhances your party, which like any good RPG, leaves you feeling rewarded towards the end having managed an even stronger party.

    5. Is this game for you?
    I’ve never been a fan of traditional pinball games. I can appreciate the high-score appeal, but I’ve always wanted a more compelling reason to play, and Rollers offered something unique. It’s a very ambitious game, and breaks traditional conventions, but the developers at Phantom Compass dared to do it. And it works. From the moment I realized that I had to use the back-side of a flipper to find that hidden key, to the hours I’ve spent eagerly grinding for “one more level... one more level” before challenging that next boss, I’ve never had this much fun with a Pinball game before. There have been several pinball action titles that could fall under the same category, such as Sonic Spinball or Mario Pinball Land, but Rollers has perfected the genre in 2014 adding unprecedented, original features, polished so well that no other developer can even touch them. During development, they were picked-up by Atlus, which in my books add to their credibility. If you’re a hardcore fan of Puzzle, Pinball or Role Playing Games, Rollers of the Realm is a true gem that belongs in your gaming library. The game is so original, you could give it its own genre: The Roll Playing Game.    … Expand
  2. strimen
    Nov 19, 2014
    9
    A cool mash-up of pinball, rpg, and puzzle genres. Each character that joins your party is a pinball (10 main characters in total), with theirA cool mash-up of pinball, rpg, and puzzle genres. Each character that joins your party is a pinball (10 main characters in total), with their own look, size, special ability (uses your party mana bar), and fully voiced swagger.

    There is a 6 Chapter fantasy story line, across 30+ boards, that has some good humour and a few twists along the way.

    The music is great and fits the setting and action. The other sounds are good, but not overpowering or annoying which can happen in easily in either the pinball or RPG genre.

    Also has controller support on the PC side (I used a stock Xbox 360 controller to test it) and fully customizable controls for both the keyboard and controllers.

    Overall a great time waster with more than enough hours of play for the $10 price tag. There are also five unlockable high-score leaderboard arena tables, which are boards from the story but repopulated as challenge scenario.    … Expand
  4. puzzlemate
    Nov 21, 2014
    9
    Pinball but with balls that have 'character' in a few senses of the word.

    Your array of pinballs is your adventuring party and every new    Pinball but with balls that have 'character' in a few senses of the word.

    Your array of pinballs is your adventuring party and every new location is a new pinball table challenge where different powers or characteristics can be used. Bigger ball so sewers less, smaller ball for greater accuracy including the ability to tilt or 'nudge' the table more to go where you want. Toss in some special abilities like multi-ball on demand and they have a lot going for them.

    The game is definitely skill driven as pinball skills are used. The physics feels 'physics-y enough' even with the extra stuff tagged on, like moving enemies acting as bumpers that want to knock you out of play. Can make some boards very challenging but not impossibly so, often encouraging you to try different balls (or sequence of balls) or upgrades to manage the new board and you definitely notice the upgrades, like the ability to stun an opponent when you ricochet off of him or a ball with a ranged attack to shoot arrows as it passes close by to take out the enemy 'bumper'. The puzzle components in addition to the skill and action parts keeps each board interesting and new.

    There is replay as you can go back to previous boards for more experience and gold as well as an 'arena mode' for some ****

    Not something I've played before and pretty good on top of that simple fact.

    Totally worth picking up!    … Expand
  5. Kerpi
    Dec 10, 2014
    6
    This is a quirky game with a great concept and a ton going for it (including its humour, characters, and really interesting RPG elements), butThis is a quirky game with a great concept and a ton going for it (including its humour, characters, and really interesting RPG elements), but much of the level design is just terrible. Many of the levels are sectioned off in such a way that you can get knocked back to the previous section. You won't know why you've succeeded or failed in a particular instance, and that makes it almost impossible to duplicate the action you need to do to advance the game. Having to go back and do that section again is a grind, contributes nothing to the game or your score, and utterly boring.

    I recommend this game for those who want to support an interesting mixture of ideas in the Indie community and like quirky games/pinball games, but I can't recommend this for anyone just wanting to have a fun experience since the grinding will sap the fun out of their experience quickly.    … Expand
  6. TitaniumDragon
    Sep 18, 2017
    6
    Rollers of the Realm is a pinball game with RPG elements, thereby proving that absolutely anything can have RPG elements attached to it. TheRollers of the Realm is a pinball game with RPG elements, thereby proving that absolutely anything can have RPG elements attached to it. The characters in the game are represented by pinballs, and the levels are pinball tables, with enemies standing around in them and environments to navigate via the power of flippers.

    The game is, at its heart, pretty simple mechanically – you can flip the left-hand flippers or right-hand flippers, there’s a button for pulling back the spring and shooting the ball into the system, that same button is used for deploying special abilities, and the movement of the ball can be influenced by pushing to the side on the control sticks.

    Where the game gets interesting is in the balls themselves; each of the represents a different character, and each has somewhat different characteristics. The balls aren’t all of the same size – two are smaller than the rest, and two are larger. Some of the balls have ranged attacks, making it so that they deal damage to enemies merely by going nearby – but they don’t just deal damage in an aura, they fire an attack every so often at enemies as they fly on by. Some deal more damage to enemies if they hit them in the back; others will gather more mana from the environment. Each ball also has a unique special ability, be it summoning multiple balls, creating a stopper on the bottom of the screen to stop the ball from falling off, or powering up the ball in some way to make it deal more damage or be more maneuverable.

    Like an RPG, the player has a mana bar, which is incremented by hitting various objects in the environment, as well as some character abilities creating mana by attacking enemies. Rather than having a conventionally limited number of lives, every time a ball ends up falling out the bottom of the map, the player temporarily loses access to the character whose ball just rolled out. Characters can be swapped between while the ball is trapped on a flipper or in the spring launcher, and many missions are much easier if you use the right balls to solve your problems.

    The enemies themselves don’t just twiddle their thumbs in all cases, either – some of them will actively attack the flippers in various ways, breaking them and making them smaller (and thus, making it much harder to keep yours in play). The player will generally want to avoid this as much as possible, and some of the pinballs also have various healing abilities to repair the flippers. These attacks range from enemies walking down to the bottom of the screen and physically attacking the paddles, to throwing ranged attacks at them (which can be intercepted by your balls, though it will deflect the balls), to throwing flaming fireballs down which burn the paddles when they touch them but which can be shot back into the playing field like normal balls.

    The goal of most maps is to kill all the enemies, but some of the maps mix this up by instead requiring you to navigate a hard-to-navigate section, make a few trick shots, break through a wall by repeatedly hitting it with a ball, or otherwise navigate through the levels. The maps also often include secrets, which give extra gold to the player for completing them, as well as a unique item for a character which can’t be bought in stores.

    Between missions, gold can be spent on the characters to upgrade their abilities, and you can also hire new balls (i.e. new characters) to add to your team.

    The game has a fairly decent variety of balls in a sense, but ultimately the game really breaks down into four kinds of balls – ranged attack balls, melee balls, highly maneuverable balls, and healing balls. While there are ten characters all told, I mostly ended up using just a few of the balls to complete the game, with the rest mostly serving as backup lives in case I lost a bunch of balls.

    All of the above might describe what the game is like, but is it actually fun? I have to admit I found myself enjoying it – pinball has always been interesting to me, and the blend of RPG mechanics with pinball was an interesting idea. Some of the maps are kind of bland, but others are pretty interesting, and lead to some interesting navigational challenges or otherwise pushing me to attack the enemies. There are a few boss fights in the game, and the last couple in particular felt fairly interesting – the very final battle is actually a three part boss fight, where the player must figure out how to beat each increasingly more difficult stage.

    If I had a complaint, it would be that the game has a few overly long levels – in particular, one level where enemies carrying torches attack a castle requires you to navigate through the level’s first half, then hold off the enemies for a while. If you fail at the end, you have to start the whole thing over again, which is a bit tedious.

    The game also spikes up a bit in difficulty at the end, which encourages the player to grind a bit, which is a bit boring.    … Expand
  7. Thirdrail
    Jan 9, 2015
    5
    If the execution on this title were half as good as the concept, it would be one of the best games of 2014. Sadly, Rollers of the Realm is aIf the execution on this title were half as good as the concept, it would be one of the best games of 2014. Sadly, Rollers of the Realm is a collection of not quite realized ideas, and malnourished game play. The pinball side of it dominates everything, of course, but, as a pinball game, the tables are never very interesting. Even the worst digital pinball tables in existence (like Zen's Civil War table from Pinball Fx2/Zen Pinball) are far, far more engaging than any of the many tables in Rollers. The assets for this title all look like they were originally designed for the 3DO, and ported up to modern systems, and it's all done in an art style which is so generic it's painful. The overall result plays like something you'd do for free, on your phone, for the twenty minutes it took you to find and download a better game.

    It's genuinely disappointing; most mediocre games are from saturated genres, so the loss of any one title to developer incompetence is minimal damage, but, in this case, the fact that this game sucks means that the entire genre of "pinball RPGs" is bad. That's a shame, especially for a game that was developed as a portfolio piece, meant to send its creators on to bigger and better projects. Rollers of the Realm proves, with remarkable efficacy, that no one at Phantom Compass is ready for prime time.    … Expand

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