Octopus Overlords

I picked this one up for a couple bucks during the last Steam sale, and have been enjoying it. Pinball meets RPG, as each character is represented by a ball with its own abilities. From the heavy hitting knight and backstabbing rogue to the arrow-shooting ranger and the reviving healer.

Defeat the enemies, find the keys to the chests, and advance the storyline. A pretty fun little diversion

I had fun with this for a couple hours, but some of the table objectives become very unclear and/or ridiculous. I'm a pretty decent pinballer, and finally gave up after bashing my head up against one of the levels over and over again.

I've not had too much difficulty with knowing what to do, merely accomplishing it.

I've had difficulty with a few levels, especially when my flippers get worn down by archers, but have found the healer's mana gathering shots rebuild them. It makes things much easier, even if she does take forever to kill enemies.

I've replayed most of the maps through the first two levels, as I wasn't particularly focused on the key/chests, but once I realized that those were free upgrades, I went back for them.

I just finished the campaign on Casual difficulty (downshifting from Challenging when I got frustrated midway). If, like me, you like Pinball Arcade and Pinball FX, you ought to try this game, too.

It's not as flashy and advanced as Pinball FX tables. It doesn't even have many of the features of classic pinball games. But it has other things going for it:

• As the story progresses, more characters join your party, giving you more balls to tackle the increasingly difficult tables. Each of your characters is a ball with abilities that you can upgrade between missions. My favorite is the Ranger, who shoots arrows at enemies as he whizzes past them. I maxed out his shooting range and frequency, and had a lot of fun listening to his amused laughs and the enemies' frustrated grunts as he unleashed fusillades throughout the battlefield.
• Each character has a special ability (such as multiball) that requires mana to activate. There is one special ability, the Healer's Revive for bringing back lost balls, that is so overpowering in importance that I conserved mana so that I could use it. As a result, I didn't use other character's special abilities very often.
• Enemy archers will shoot your flippers, damaging them and reducing their size. Before your flippers are too worn down, you'll want to put a character with Heal abilities in play so that you can restore your flippers.
• Instead of having a tilt feature like typical pinball games, Rollers of the Realm lets you gently push the ball left or right without limitation or penalty. This gives you a slight edge that doesn't feel like cheating, and you'll need it to solve the more puzzle-like tables.

It took me a while to understand all these mechanics as there is no manual and little help available online.

The campaign's story starts nicely when your plucky rogue intervenes to stop a drunk knight from getting beat up by hoodlums. The banter between the two is well written and voiced. I was looking forward to a campaign with gradually developing characters and story. Unfortunately, the story eventually loses its confident pace and becomes a breathless rush to the finish. Characters join the party without having a chance to develop, and the plot becomes a summary of details instead of a story. The whole campaign is over in 10 hours and while it is fun, it could have had a more engaging story.

I would like to see a sequel. We haven't had many evil-themed games lately, so it would be cool to have a sequel in which you play a zombie, dragon, gnomish inventor, evil mage, etc. I can see it now. Rollers of the Realm 2: Bad to the Ball!