Roogoo

Developer: Spidermonk Entertainment
Steam Release: Dec 2009
Hours Played: 1.3
Similar To: Bit.Trip Beat / Bit.Trip Void / Dyad / Retro Grade
Rating:  1/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
Despite sounding like spaghetti sauce, this game is about slotting different shaped pegs into different shaped holes. The shapes fall from above while you rotate the holes for them to fall into. It offers a fair challenge of testing your reactions for a while but the novelty wears off fast. Set in the skies and in outer-space and in a 3D setting, the game begins with a series of discs placed vertically with spaces in between. Cut out of the discs are 3-5 shapes to accomodate the pegs that will start falling in a straight trajectory from above. There is a meter to the left that fills as falling pegs crash outside their correct routes and a score on the top right. Finally there is a timer that counts down from a random amount of seconds but I have yet to figure out its significance as nothing happens when it reaches zero. 

BALANCE & PACE
Underneath the pegs a series of dots appear showing their path and where they're heading towards. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to use the left and right arrow keys to rotate the discs so the pegs fall through their corresponding hole. Pegs come in larger stacks later. Sometimes they'll land and stop and sometimes they'll continue their journey to the bottom. When all the wave of pegs have finished, a series of stats appear and you continue onto the next level. The difficulty increases with more shapes (and holes) getting added in later levels. Also, butterflies sometimes appear and fly upwards with stacks of pegs (meaning you have to control the discs from underneath) and sometimes you get mean guys standing around who you'll need to bump off by speeding things up (pressing the down arrow). You'll need to keep up, stay sharp and active at all times.

PRESENTATION & DESIGN

Your main menu gives you four paths allowing you to enter the single or multiplayer game, plus a Help & Options option along with an Exit Game button. The Help & Options path lets you tweak a few minor changes and shows you the controls. Just high or low choices here for the graphics which are stuck in a low resolution regardless. You'll certainly notice this while navigating these menus. An XBox controller can curiously be used for the menus but not in the game. The game is brightly coloured and, with a pointless back-story about cute and fluffy creature named roogoos out to save the day, is clearly targetted at a young or family orientated audience. 

PROGRESS SYSTEM
On Clicking Single Player Game you are taken to a level-select screen listing the names of the 44 levels. Titles in orange text are those that have been completed while those greyed out haven't. Clicking on one of these shows you the high-score and the best time. There are no online leaderboards as far as I'm aware.

CONCLUSION

Although an interesting novelty and a pleasant little distraction at first, Roogoo's simplicity is not necessarily a strength. You rotate discs to allow pegs of various shapes to fall through the correct hole; there really is not that much more to the game than this. Sure, they get pulled upwards by butterflies so you have to control the discs from a low angle view but there isn't enough to make the player want to return and revisit those old levels. While it's not a badly done game or poorly designed it actually works perfectly well and is quite a solid title; it's just not conducive to marathon sessions and works best playing the odd 15 minute session once in a while.