Roll and Back Again [DEMO]

This is a demo version of a 2D puzzle-platformer with environmental puzzles. Commercial off-the-shelf rollerbots have excellent battery life but very limited autonomy. They need the player's help to understand the world, discover their abilities and accomplish their objectives.

Maneuvering, experimentation and some reasoning are necessary to succeed. Explore the levels, figure out how things work and then how to get where you need to go. Create checkpoints to save your progress, try different approaches, fail productively.

There is no jump button. A rollerbot is only as strong as the torque on its pendulum. Gather speed to get anywhere, but be mindful of braking distance. Excessive deformation can be fatal. Pits can be frustrating.

About the Project

Roll and Back Again is my first game and a solo project. It started out as a few hundred lines of Python that I wrote in 2015 to play around with 2D physics. I eventually decided that Python was too slow for the calculations I wanted to do, and began working on a C framework for 2D game engines. For a while I intended to make my first game a Pong/Arkanoid derivative, but by early 2017 the goal had shifted to a puzzle-platformer inspired mainly by Lemmings and The Lost Vikings. That seemed like a less restrictive concept, and was more in line with my taste in games.

How to Play

In this demo, the objective in each level is to move the red rollerbot from the leftmost end of the level to the rightmost. Use the Left and Right arrow keys to roll, the spacebar to activate roller abilities and Page Up/Down to switch between rollers. Press "P" to pause and unpause. Press F8 to create a checkpoint. Pause, then press F5 to load the latest checkpoint, or use F6 and F7 to browse the checkpoints. Press the Escape key to save and quit.

Joypads (should) also work. Plug them in before you start the game.

There is a readme file in the downloadable packages that explains all of the above and more, like how to switch display mode. It comes in plain text (readme.txt) and joyful HTML (readme_html/index.html).

System Requirements

The game only runs on 64-bit Windows and Linux systems. I have only tested it with Debian Linux, feedback about other distributions is welcome. Having a fast processor helps, especially if you want high FPS in 2X fullscreen mode.