RollScape

Something possessed me to try out a rather unremarkable game that just launched instead of going for another from my backlog. RollScape seemed like a simple dopamine hit that I could beat under 2 hours and refund. Not that I want to abuse the developer, but because I genuinely don't believe it's a good game or a worthwhile purchase. And I was mostly right.

In RollScape, you roll a six-sided die and move forward that many alternating black and white tiles. Each tile starts out with giving 0 points, but the shop at the side lets you buy upgrades which increase the amount of points you get. You can also upgrade your die to roll bigger numbers, and there's a few special upgrades as well as powerups at milestones in the game. The points give you both, well, points, to buy more upgrades, but also energy, which lets you buy more rolls. As upgrades and energy costs get exponentially more expensive, it's your goal to make good enough decisions (and have an amount of luck) to stay ahead of that exponential curve.

It's a very basic incremental game loop with a failure mechanic. I'm sure most of the effort was spent making the graphics, but even then, this is easily a solo project that maybe took a few months. It does what it needs to, but without even a metaprogression system, there really is nothing to do after beating the game in an hour. There are some extra game modes, but it's basically just more of the same. It's a fine game for an hour, but nothing new, and not worth the price. I wouldn't recommend it.