New Rolling Omusubi
Platform: Java
Another great online game from DOFI Blog, the creator of World of Sand and other addictive Web toys made with Processing (Java), New Rolling Omusubi puts you in control of a lost ball of rolling rice. Use your nori wrapper like a sticky tongue to move along walls, ceilings, and blocks of ice and sand. Reach the goal as fast as you can to top your best times.
Two things you'll be doing a lot of are rolling and seaweed-tongue swinging. Use Z and X to move left and right and the mouse buttons to throw out nori. In many stages you'll navigate over treacherous land by using the grapple-roll-grapple technique. Click where you want to grab with your tongue, then let the omusubi pull itself in. While you're holding on for dear life, use the Z or X button to "lean", then quickly release and re-click the mouse button to grab a block ahead. Be prepared to fall, and be prepared to do some quick clicking to save yourself from a nasty demise.
New Rolling Omusubi also has a few elements, much like World of Sand. There are three main types of blocks: walls, ice, and sand. Each one reacts differently to being grappled. Ice is slippery and won't support your weight, while sand will disintegrate if you slam into it. Currents of wind also appear and blast you in different directions.
At the end of the game's 25 stages your total time is displayed along with a short comic bringing the game to a happy ending. The scene is in Japanese, but if you're very clever you can decipher the story on your own. If you're ancy and don't want to beat the game, you can simply press "N" to skip stages. You know, if you're a cheater...
Analysis: It's charming and very simple, not much else to say about this game. New Rolling Omusubi isn't very difficult and won't take you long to beat, half an hour if you take some time to explore. A full-featured version of this game would be great to see, one that incorporates more elements from the World of Sand game. In the meantime, the stoic simplicity of New Rolling Omusubi is a great experience on its own.
Get your rice rolling -
Thanks to Kyle for sending this one in!
Sweet! good to see you finally put it on the site! I recommended it ever since I started obsessing over Dofi-blog after "hell of sand"
I know this is horribly nitpicky of me, but I get uncomfortable when anyone other than Jay provides a "click." It's like plagiarism or something. Copyright infringement at the least.
I may be responsible for that, jonmay, as I have been encouraging the other authors to provide a consistent 'feel' to the site when writing their reviews. In fact, when I am posting a review for another author, I will sometimes add the 'click' link to it myself. =)
Still, it warms my heart to learn that the little details are noticed and identified with the site like that. Cheers! =D
You know, the pure and simplistic design of this game starkly contrasts with the moderately complicated system of movement. I found sometimes that my "rolling" controls would be reversed after hanging from a ceiling fixture with my "string." Other times I found it hard to get around at all. Yet somehow it all added to the wonderful feel of the game.
And I noticed that about your site, Jay. The "click" is definitely a staple.
loading... loading... loading... loading... Computer crash! give up... oh well il try again later :(
oh and the click thing... i agree...
I almost added it to my own site... but it felt... wrong!... i use too many '...'s ah well... hehe... i go n eat now!
I have the same problem as giftedweasel. I already downloaded the latest Java and I opened it in firefox and IE.
I already went and beat this game, I was waiting for it to get posted too even though I didn't request it.
In the review, though, I think there's a mistake. The "ice" blocks you describe seem to be more like "water" blocks to me...
My finger hurts a lot
39 mins
problems with running here, too. the leetle Javabar reaches and then exceeds 100%, and the game never actually loads, even after sorting Java out.
hrum.
yea that happens to me too Heff
It doesn't seem to work for me either. Funny, since I could play D_of_I's other games. Hm.
Interesting that it doesn't work on some computers. I'm using Opera on a WinXP computer and everything runs just fine. The game loads right into a story sequence you have to click through, does it even get that for for everyone?
Nope, doesn't work for me either... IE on WinXP...
Doesn't work here either, AOL on XP.
simple but very enjoyable, reminds me slightly of liero... ninja roping and dirt digging hehe
For me it just takes a long time to load\.
Wow! Thanks for taking my request!
my shortest time: 21:1
This is really hard with a laptop touchpad.
30.25
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