This review originally appeared within iLounge’s iOS Gems series within the compilation article, iPhone Gems: Games With Balls, and One with Blasting. Additional details may be found in the original article.
The more colorful of the new maze titles is Rock’n’Roll ($4) by Tag Games. In this title, you progress through 30 different mazes spread out across three different backdrops, moving a ball through channel-like nooks formed by colorful patterns of blocks. Using either the accelerometer or touchscreen, you rotate the maze and let gravity move the ball-shaped main character from place to place, collecting all of the musical notes found in each maze before being allowed to stop.
We use the phrase “allowed to stop” because the mazes, played consecutively, can become tedious.
Hearing the same song play over and over again until you get to the next piece of background art may make you want to turn the game off entirely. And some of the mazes are designed with such scale and such subtly placed notes that you’ll find yourself wandering for ages just to locate the last ones. There’s a way to see the entire map at once, but it’s not always helpful in finding remaining notes, and a combination of the controls and obstacles in the mazes can frustratingly prevent you from getting even ones in plain sight. One wonders whether the developers tried playing through the whole game themselves before releasing it.
These genuine issues having been mentioned, this isn’t a bad or even merely OK game.
The scope of the mazes here makes Rock’n’Roll last longer than other titles, so if you play a few mazes at a time, you won’t get burned out. A simple power-up system has your character shrink if he gets hit by an enemy in the maze, and grow if he finds bones to eat. At his maximum three-bone size, he can take three hits before you need to start the maze over, which seems fair, especially as you can replenish life as you pass through each maze. Kids may enjoy it, but then, they may find the larger mazes frustrating enough to ask for help.
