Roogoo

Rating Everyone Genre puzzle Publisher SouthPeak Interactive External Links Official Roogoo Website

I'm sure everyone hear had a toy like I'm thinking of as a kid, a board with different shaped holes in it and the corresponding pegs that fit in those holes. If not, just humor me. Take that board, round it off to be a circle, and then stack five of them on top of each other and start spinning them. Now you've got Roogoo... Well, minus the little wooden mallet to force the square pegs into the round holes.

Background story. The peaceful planet of Roo is blessed by showers of life giving meteors which just so happen to be shaped like playskool blocks. One day the king decides all this "living as one with nature" stuff isn't all it's cracked up to be and starts using the meteors to build cities. Then, like any other three year old who realizes the resemblance between colorful blocks and candy, he and his teddy-bear shaped followers began gorging themselves on the shiny geometric rocks. Of course this is an obvious mistake, as the Evil Overlord List plainly states, tucked between "I shall not laugh maniacally" and "I will not claim to be invincible", "I will not consume an energy field larger than my head." So now the King and his followers have been twisted into evil, greedy, mean spirited "Meemoos" bent on hoarding all the meteors to themselves and dooming the planet to a slow death.

Let's be honest here. Did you play Tetris for the story? I thought not, so let’s not dwell on that. The unique story sets up the gimmick of the game. Geometrically shaped "meteors" will fall from above towards round platforms with matching shaped holes in them. It's your job to spin the platforms to make sure that the proper holes line up with the proper shapes. The shapes will stack up on a hole until they have enough weight to force their way through, then they will fall to a lower platform and repeat the process. The game essentially consists of three techniques: “Spin Right“, “Spin Left“, and “Fall Faster“. Simple? You wish.

You start with just three shapes falling one-by-one at a leisurely pace. The game helpfully informs you that the meter on the left side of the screen is the aptly named "Lose Meter.“ It fills up when you miss shapes, and you wonder how you could ever manage to fill such a huge meter. Of course you know it won't last, but you lie to yourself. You're getting pretty good at this. This is kinda nice and relaxing. Then they throw in a fourth shape. Jerks. Then when you wrap your brain around the fourth shape, your Meemoo nemesis orders his minions into battle against you and they start standing ON TOP OF THE HOLES. This is where the "Fall Faster" button comes into play as gravity alone is not enough to knock them out of the way. When you smash one of the teddies on the head the stack of blocks bounces slightly back upwards, meaning some quick spinning allows for combos to be racked up in the process of filling your meteor quotas. Of course they can't allow you to get too comfortable, so once you've become a Meemoo slaying machine they introduce the butterflies. Yes I'm serious. You too will probably react the same as myself: "What!? They move up, too!?" Better learn to think backwards. Oh did I mention there's another shape? "Burst" drops? And color coding to worry about later? Still sound simple? Yeah, right.

So far I've just discussed the gameplay. Graphically the game doesn't disappoint, either. The game world presentation is a bright cel-shaded stratospheric paradise reminiscent of games like Cloud and does an excellent job of setting the mood. Unfortunately the graphics can be something of a double edged sword, as the camera angle can at times place the hole you need to land on behind the stacks of blocks, leaving you to match up a stack and hole blindly. Also there are cases where the hole your stack has to pass through is lined up with the stacks below it so that you can't spin the lower disk without hitting them and losing a few blocks. But these are forgivable sins.

In the end, if you like your puzzle games to have some twitch to them, Roogoo is the perfect game for you. There's plenty here for you and a friend to keep busy with. It's a nice presentation with a simple but innovative mechanic that allows for a surprising amount of variety and depth. If you prefer games that are designed more for out-thinking than out-twitching the puzzles, you'd probably best look elsewhere (and don't patronize me by suggesting Casual Difficulty. That's willfully admitting to not being hardcore.) And for the love of all that is good and holy, think of the poor crushed Meemoos!