What started out as an award-winning entry at the Global Game Development Competition in Iran – which is an online competition – has now been developed into a 50 level game for the Android platform.
Indian game developer Lucid Labs recently released ‘ROTO’ on the Google Play Store. On of the developers, Chirag Chopra – a 22 year old student pursuing a Masters Degree in Game Design, describes the game as a simple, circular puzzle-platformer with a neat and minimal greyscale artstyle. It has also achieved various awards and nominations, including an honourable mention in GGDC 2014, and a nomination for the Indie Prize Award at Casual Connect Asia 2014.
“We had designed the game for an online competition within just 24 hours; the theme given was using the Sun and a flag, so we figured why not use a small ball and thrown in bigger balls for the game play. The polishing took three months and I was glad to have the support of Ubisoft’s sound designer, Ashley Reed (known for Watch Dogs and The Crew) to work on the game’s sound,” expounds Chopra.
ROTO features simple a very simple gameplay mechanics and is a free-to-play model, allowing players to buy power-ups and additional upgrades. However, the game can be completed without paying a single rupee as well, and all the content can be unlocked by just progressing through the game and clearing all levels.
ROTO is a minimalist puzzler with balls of different sizes. You play as the smallest one. The game offers a simple one tap control and using that, the player has to jump across different rotatory platforms, collecting stars and unlocking more levels as you go. Play over 50 levels, each with new and unfriendly balls offering new puzzle-platforming awesomeness and multiple solutions to each level. It’s a puzzle after all.
Chopra adds: “We used Corona SDK to develop the game on Android and are also working on making it available on iOS soon. There are already 50 levels available and we will be updating the game play every month.”
The game though simple, gets a little tricky and interesting with progressive levels and certainly keeps the player on the edge of the seat, as the little tiny ball spins, bounces, gets crushed and squeezed through the different levels to finally reach the end of the game… If you manage to reach there that is! (editor chuckles)
