If you liked Peggle, and a lot of people did, you may want to check out Roundguard.  It’s a lot like the classic pachinko-styled game, just with more RPG elements in a fantasy setting.  It’s available on nearly pretty much anything you can play a game on, but reviewed on PS4 here.

To start, you’ll pick from three ball-shaped heroes.  A warrior, a rogue, or a wizard.  Each has their own levels of hit points, attack power, and mana energy, and their own special attacks.  The warrior has a spin attack, the rogue can double jump, and the wizard can shoot lighting, and you activate these skills by pressing the square button.  Your goal in each room is to defeat all the enemies.  To do this, you’ll aim a cannon at the top of the screen downward.  Your character will bounce along objects and ram into enemies and items until they get to the bottom of the screen, and then you start the process over again.  It’s Game Over if you run out of energy.

When you hit an enemy, they’ll lose hit points, but you’ll also lose some, too.  To refill your health, just bounce into a red potion.  Special attacks use mana, which you can refill by bumping into blue potions.  Try to land on the moving cushion on the bottom of the screen.  If you don’t, you’ll hit spikes and also lose hit points.  Other things to watch out for are treasure chests, which can give you weapons, armor, or skills you can equip to give you an edge.  When you defeat all the enemies in the room, you’ll aim for the next path on the map, which has branching areas, and then it’s off to the next stage.  Some rooms will have sidequests that will give you bonuses if you complete them.  And when you are defeated, your gold is tallied up and if you have enough, you’ll be able to spin a wheel for a chance for a bonus on your next run.

While I did appreciate the simple gameplay and goofy humor, there were some things about this game I didn’t like.  Progression felt slow, especially since you couldn’t take your leveled up character with items along in your next run.  And due to the nature of this game and rooms being randomly generated, a lot of it felt like it was based on luck.  So the game didn’t hold my interest as long as what I thought it would, and I think it could’ve stood to be a few dollars cheaper, too.  But like I said, if you really liked Peggle, you’ll want to check this one out anyway.

Kid Factor:

Roundguard is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Mild Blood and Fantasy Violence.  You just bump into cartoony monsters and zap them with magic, and that’s as violent as it gets.  One of the status ailments is ‘bleeding’ where you take damage for three turns, and it’s represented by a single drop of red.  Reading skill is helpful for the text, and younger gamers may find this one too repetitive and/or difficult.

Tags: Game Reviews