One part Adventure, two parts Puzzle, and a dash of “the Doctor” just about sums up Rotor’scope’s most basic constituent parts. But there is more to developer Nivel21‘s latest game. It weighs in with 150 puzzles, facebook integration, and comes complete with a puzzle building engine to allow players to create and share puzzles.
Gameplay
At it’s heart Rotor’scope is a puzzle game with an adventure wrapped around it. The game specializes in spacial puzzles with a vast array of various puzzle elements that add to the complexity of the basic puzzle design. At the most fundamental level, you are given a few colored block which, once aligned in a row of three or more disappear. The game then adds to this system with blocks with slightly differing behavior, such as wild card blocks or blocks that switch colors with adjacent squares. To move the squares, you manipulate the playing field’s orientation by rotating it clockwise, counter-clockwise, or a vertical flip. The puzzle selection is managed by using a “world map” like top down view of the mansion the game takes place in and as puzzles are solved more rooms and puzzles are unlocked.
The gameplay itself is functional and is adequate for a puzzle game. The puzzles themselves range from simply finishing them in one move to requiring dozens of resets and retries. I like to think I am a person at least one standard deviation away from average intelligence, but some of these puzzles had me seriously questioning in which direction I was deviating. In one situation I spent what seemed like hours trying to crack a puzzle that was required for progression in the game. Fortunately it was very near the end and was eventually accomplished solidifying my title as Puzzle Lord Victorious.
Story
You follow the story of Julie as she has just recently acquired an old dilapidated mansion previously owned by Professor Rotherbaum and is intent on repurposing it as a hotel. Upon her initial investigation of the mansion, she stumbles upon a device that later is identified as the Rotor’scope. This device allows Julie to unlock various mechanisms around the house and in some cases even repair them. As she works her way through the various rooms she finds a strange man locked in one of them. He introduces himself as Traveler and gives Julie the run down on whats been happening. Oddly enough, I suppose for the purpose of moving the story along, Julie opts not to fry him with a taser and joins the adventure to locate the missing Professor Rotherbaum.
Being the huge Doctor Who fan that I am, I found the story rather enjoyable. The similarities between the two are unmistakable with story line parallels and character dynamic equivalents. The character Traveler is quirky, gives the impression of intelligence, and has a sorted relationship with time. Meanwhile Julie appears to be thrilled with the prospects of adventure and makes the best angry/pouty face ever. In fact, I often found myself put off by the having to go solve another puzzle to get more story and dialog. This actually became my biggest caveat with the game. Perhaps as a result of poor pacing with regard to at times solving several puzzles in a row before getting any interesting interaction.
Audio Visual
My significant personal bias may, once again, show through in the visuals portion of this section. This is because the game itself has a very Steampunk / H.G. Wells look to it with period clothing and lots of brass gears and cogs. You find yourself approaching the point of feeling a bit hit over the head with this during the animated sequence leading up to each of the puzzles. In the scene you see an animated mechanical door open as it depicts the Rotor’scope system. It plays this every single time you enter the puzzle system and plays a particularly annoying musical bit with all the gears crunching and whirling. Fortunately the sequence is capable of being skipped and, believe me, you learn which button does that quickly. Don’t get me wrong though, that really is the only negative within this category, the mansions art is fine and the character designs, while stylized, are very nice with great detail given to the expressions to really communicate the tone the dialogue should take on.
Within the game there are puzzles that sometimes aren’t necessary for purposes of progression. It is in these cases the game typically rewards your efforts with a bit of art. The artwork is pretty great and for once I actually found myself interested enough to flip through them. The picture above is one of these pieces of art, featuring the time machine “AnyThree”.
The audio of the game is adequate and serves its purpose in a way that doesn’t typically detract from the rest of the game. The music is normally very relaxing and doesn’t grind your gears as the hours count up. The only real audio annoyance is during the animated sequence I already complained about previously. My main audio complaint for it was that it seemed a bit louder than I would have liked it to have been.
Summary
So lets recap here, Rotor’scope has an infinite number of puzzles, a decent story influenced by some of our favorite sci-fi shows, and some pretty decent art worthy of its own merit. It hits the cash register at 400 Microsoft Points on the XBox Indie Marketplace and that feels about right. This isn’t really your typical indie title, it is made by people I would describe as industry professionals and feels pretty polished. That said check out the demo for sure, if you are a fan of the aforementioned influences I would encourage a buy with just a little whiff of reservation.