I'm not saying the game is overpriced, but I don't think it's worth your time. There are hundreds or maybe thousands of free browser puzzlers (or cheap ones on Steam) that have way more meat and better QoL.
Design:
- It's a very, very straightforward game. Almost all of the challenge here comes from speed/execution, not the puzzles. I beat all 40 levels in 20 minutes.
- In AT LEAST a third of the levels, you can straight-up ignore 50%-80% of the elements. I can sort of see how the developer intended these levels to work, but for any level that has more than like 10 things on the screen, there are obvious paths that let you skip a lot of it.
QoL:
- Rotation is backwards!! Right should move all the notches clockwise, and left should move them counterclockwise. Idk, none of the other reviews mention this so maybe I'm just crazy, but I feel like it's objectively wrong. If you die to this in regular play it's not a big deal, but in One Chance mode I ended up checking which way I needed to rotate before every "throw". Even after 90+ minutes of playing my "instinct" was to rotate the wrong way (the way that makes sense). The "right=clockwise" thing is just so ingrained in me from other games that use rotation. Even if you flip the controls in the box that comes up before the game launches, it doesn't actually change in-game.
- You can't see if the ball's about to thrown left or right. I can see the argument that this makes the game a bit harder, but I don't think the loss of clarity is worth it. Edit: Actually, you can. In the top-right there are 4 arrows that show the possible throw directions. I was thinking more like having 2 arrows on the ball, but I guess this works.
- The default color scheme is pretty garish, and Night Mode doesn't persist (so you need to re-toggle every time you enter the game). But at least Night Mode is beautiful. Definitely play with that on.
- The positioning of some of the elements is weird (it's not on a grid like you might expect). Sometimes it's not easy to see if the ball is going to collide with a big circle (you die if this happens) so it's not immediately clear if some solutions are possible. Also some of the "WinBoxes" aren't centered on the ball, doesn't affect anything but it does annoy me a little bit lol
It took me 20 minutes to beat the initial game. One Chance mode took a bit under 2 hours, but admittedly I was playing preeeetty badly. If you're on the ball there's probably 90 minutes of total content in rOt. Like I said, it's a fair asking price but eh, there were better uses of my time.
Oh, and heads up: one of the other reviews mentions that One Chance mode is "roguelike" and I just want to say this is definitely not the case. Part of the reason I bought this is because I thought One Chance had randomly generated levels, but what it actually is is the first 30 levels back-to-back, if you die you start over. It's not really close to "roguelike" or even "roguelite". This isn't the developer's fault ofc, just clarifying
