Quick Review: Rolling Sun

Nice concept idea, I guess?

I hope this is gonna get brighter soon.

Rolling Sun was developed by Mystik’Art and also published by them to Steam on June 3rd, 2015. It’s a game about a large rolling sphere making its way around a bunch of ruins.

Two things can be noted here. First, the world around the sphere looks very nice, quite great even, it’s pretty. This particular game was built to try out the features of CRYENGINE, which apparently knocks it out of the park in several elements of game design – physics in particular, but also the lighting of each area and the watery sections. So that’s one good thing going for it.

Increasingly bright, but still dark.

Second, this is about as basic a physics game as can be – you’re just guiding a big ball around. Jumping, sometimes. Avoiding endless pits. And of course, you gain additional abilities over time. The plot is roughly described on the store page: This big stone sphere you’re controlling is the last object a weakening Sun God has managed to take control of, and now that deity is trying to regain power in order to escape Planet Earth. And possibly beat up its rival, Moon God, in the process. Nothing like two elements of the cosmos brawling it out with big stone marbles.

Now it's bright. Time to get jumpin'.

The game relies heavily on timing – gotta time your jumps very precisely in order to carry the big stone from its starting point to, well, wherever it needs to go. There are quite a few checkpoints, which is all nice and good – you’ll need them. You will frequently need to build up momentum with the Rolling Sun, in order to jump across large pits. Take advantage of raised terrain and other ledges to cross. And, of course, be ready to jump again soon afterwards, or be ready to stop whenever necessary, too. Eventually, the path goes downwards through Incan and Mayan constructions, leading to zones where more precise control of the sphere becomes required.

Hop hop hoppity, runaway ball.

Perhaps I would need to see more of the game, but it didn’t hook me in. This type of physics-based platforming could be interesting, but aside from the beautiful visuals there isn’t much to be seen. And of course, this is one of those games that ups the ante really quickly. It isn’t long until the platforming and jumping has to be perfect in order to get through. You don’t have much of a margin for error.

This game, along with Only If and many others reviewed on this blog through the past Steam Packs, is part of a Steam bundle called The Big One, a set that has a lot of games of varying quality, most of them from starting developers. Not all of them were bad, there were some nice surprises in there, but so far, most games here weren’t all that great. Oddly enough, the bundle tends to appear and disappear, so it's hard to keep track of it (I can't even make a link to it right now), but yeah - not great stuff.

If you want only Rolling Sun, it’s available for about 2$.