Why so glum, chum? Need something hipper to make you feel chipper? Hurry up and say yes, because I'm running out of rhyming phrases. Rock-n-LOL is a short platform game in which the goal is to find happiness by swinging your way through a sketchbook maze. Every drop of colored water you collect makes you a little bit happier! Hooray, water!
Rather than using the arrow keys to jump around, control your block-like character by shooting a short grappling hook to grab onto colored walls. Click and hold to grab, then pay attention to the circle that's appeared around your cursor. That's the attractor (doot do-doo!). While still holding the mouse, move the attractor near your character to lengthen and shorten your rope and swing back and forth. It's a bit of a different control scheme to get used to, but once you get a bit of practice, you'll be flying around levels in no time.
As you merrily swing your way through each level, you must grab each of the colored water droplets in order to move to the next level. You can grab on to colored walls, but not black lines, and stay clear of the red triangles that can instantly kill you! Be sure to keep an eye out for power-ups that reverse or eliminate gravity, making navigating just a bit trickier to handle.
Rock-n-LOL's sixteen levels combine in the menu to show you your long journey to find happiness, plotting your progress in colorful paper form. While it might not take you long to reach the end, Rock-n-LOL serves as a quick challenge that requires quick thinking and reflexes to make things swing your way. So cheer up, and hang on tight!
With this review, I believe JIG now has its first Spoonerism review pair: Rock'n'LOL and Lock'n'Roll!
Cute little game, but definitely needs some more challenge.
I really enjoyed the end, when you'd beaten all the stages and discovered they all fit together neatly into the 4x4 map grid, with continuous passages between.
The control scheme takes some getting used to, but in the end it feels pretty comfortable. The hardest part is realizing that your attractor can overpower gravity, something atypical of your usual grappling hook game.
For some reason, the sound effects appear to turn themselves off after the "Rest" screens. The icon says the sound's still on, but you have to toggle it off then back on to get sounds again. The music works just fine.
I love the colored pencil on graph paper aesthetic. The developer ought to reuse it in the future even if they do a completely different genre of game next.
I'd have liked to see more stages with really unusual, zany decorations. The geometric shapes were nice, but I never felt really compelled to reach the next stage to see what would be there. Thankfully, the game is rather short and simple, so you can play through without that ever becoming an issue.
-SirNiko
It's fun to play and fun to look at, and the difficulty increases at just the right rate for me. I have my fingers crossed that I'll actually be able to complete all 16 levels.
But I wish there were more rest points within the levels. Some levels require holding the mouse button down for long segments of travel. I am getting gradually more skilled, but I just finished level 9 and my mouse finger is still aching a bit even after typing all this. If there was a toggle key to hold him in place ... Oh, duh, there is. There's a Pause key (P). Double duh. (Power of the post?)
@Barbara
:o
Try a Softer click touch. 8)
Good one =)
Quality little game. Nice and simple style, original visuals. Not too difficult - especially for Worms Ninja Rope veterans!
I liked it. The controls took a bit of getting used to. I had to resort to the walkthrough for level three to fully understand them. But once you get a feel for them, the levels are fairly easy to get through.
It reminded me of something Johnny K might have come up with.
@Tobberian, thanks, that makes sense, but I find it almost impossible to gently squeeze the mouse when I'm frantically trying to achieve something in a game.
Anyway, the P-pause key did the trick for me.
I've been sitting here for a few minutes, and it doesn't seem to be loading for me...
...And yet it's loading in Safari.
Update