REVIEW : Roundguard (XBOX Series X)
Among so many blockbusters, action adventures, role-playing games with 100 hours or battle royales, many times you need to take a breath and try something that, even knowing that it is not the latest wonder or the height of originality, keeps you hooked longer than you could have imagined. If you are looking for a game of this style, perhaps Roundguard by Wonderbelly Games is what you are looking for. This pinball puzzle and physics title is available on the recent Apple Arcade subscription service – clearly designed for mobile phones – although it can also be found on PC, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One; coming soon to PS4.
A dungeon pinball
Perhaps if we describe it as a dungeon crawler with role-playing elements and random screens, our minds take us to the umpteenth top-view indie roguelite, like so many that are released today. Roundguard complies with these mechanics but is more inspired by other games such as PopCap’s Peggle, a game that does not sound so much today but was successful at the time; in turn, that game had traits of the mythical Breakout. To put it quickly: we shoot something – in this case a character – from the top to a screen with vessels, enemies, potions and more, scattered on the screen, while the character bounces and breaks objects or attacks enemies. A kind of pinball where you have to calculate well the launch angle, the rebounds that will follow and, why not, cross your fingers so that luck makes us damage the greatest number of enemies and then fall on the safe area of the part bottom, constantly moving.
Indeed it is very simple gameplay, perhaps too much. To remedy this, and give it a more unique touch, several playable aspects have been included that make each game different. On the one hand, we have those roguelike traits that change the screens every time we restart for a kill, so you will never know which enemies, traps or “dungeon” design that you are going to find. The goal is to get as far as possible, get high scores, and appear on the scoreboards; when we die, we will gain some advantage for the next game, making our return a little easier. The approximate duration until the end can be an hour, but it is expected that you will play again later.
At the beginning we can choose our character that corresponds to a class, each one with health, attack and mana parameters: Flagon the warrior stands out for his vitality above the average, Shadie the indomitable for a balance between all his characteristics and control Accurate, and Fizz the Sorceress has more mana points. The reason is that we damage enemies when hitting them, but they also attack us during the crash. Health potions and magic points abound to maintain a healthy level, so sometimes before we go after trolls and skeletons first, we will prioritize recovering our state. Death ends the game.
But the warrior, the sorceress or the indomitable are also differentiated by their initial abilities, and also as we progress we will get new equipment that improves health or attack -weapons-, as well as techniques that consume magic points with various effects. Flagon can weaken to perform a 360º turn that attacks enemies within his area, Shade has double jump to correct trajectories and Fizz uses a lightning bolt. Thus, the Peggle that we already know has several layers of customization and randomness added that make it always fresh so that in a game you can, for example, add an ability that weakens nearby enemies.
There are some more mechanics, like the option to choose “route” at the end of a saga. Since we are exploring a labyrinthine map, with forks, depending on the path we take at the end of the screen we can reach screens with treasures, more confrontations and even a boss. It is true that without other modes – it asks for a versus mode or time trial variants and the like – the game knows little for those who don’t bite with the scoreboards, but it is entertaining enough for short game sessions; It seems ideal for mobile phones, but we cannot imagine, for example, spending long hours in the armchair in front of the television. The same as we can say that it is addictive, it can also burn very quickly: it gives the feeling that you have seen everything with just a few screens.
Nice, although somewhat impersonal
The aesthetic is clean and serves its purpose well, at least on the gaming side. On the other hand, in the version that we have played, on PC, the information on the sides seems very overloaded and makes it difficult to see what is important at a glance, although data such as the attack power of the enemies are probably not excessively relevant in this case. Of course, the illustrations “Flash style” perhaps we have too much seen from the era of games on the web, they quickly fall into the generic. The music is happy, but there are few songs and we will soon end up tired of the soundtrack.
