Rotastic

Took me forever to find this game. It was a big part of my childhood and is just as fun as I remembered it to be.

10/10
I'm trying to 100% the game but the last few levels are so hard
i killed 3 people in 4 seconds in the game and got a different achievement O:

Rotastic is an ancient game from 2012. It's a whopping 12 years old at the time of this review. The game lacks support for the typical features of modern gaming PCs, hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on contemporary machines. The game looks and feels dated. Despite this lack of modernisation, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an old game. This seems to have be lingering on Steam with an inflated price to try profit from abandonware.

The game itself is a very shallow and simple action reflexes game where you have a simple grappling hook and you must attach/detach it from various points while you swing around it endlessly. You can lengthen or shorten the grapple and attach/detatch as you need, and you need to time everything right to swing between the nodes and collect all the gems on the way. Basically if this was made today it would have been a mobile app instead of slightly worsening the entire Steam catalogue by appearing here.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.

The game features simple, cartoony 2D graphics, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort mobile apps. 3D graphics programming does require a degree of skill and competence and unfortunately not all developers have the budget or talent to deliver this, despite 3D graphics cards hitting the mainstream in the 1990's. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing.

The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.

PC gamers will be insulted by the presence of console peasant children's toy controller prompts, despite this being on PC. Developers should try to be aware which platform they're developing for.

This looks a lot like it was designed for consoles, but released on Steam instead by mistake. While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this never made it to the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 11 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.

So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

Rotastic is relatively expensive for an abandonware nostalgia gouge, at $5 USD, and it's not worth it. The game is just too old, hasn't been modernised. And as the old saying goes, you can't go home again.

For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Torchlight", "Killing Floor 2" or "Deus Ex: Human Revolution". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.

Simple, yet innovative gameplay using rotations and gem collection to create a interesting loop.
Should you buy this? Probably not, but it's a super cheap title with a different twist. If you like collecting fun local multiplayer options for gaming parties, I recommend it!

Tell me a game where you can grapple a hook onto and swing your way across point-to-point, hinge-to-hinge like a inebriated fool riding a merry-go-round performing all sorts of devastating aerial acrobatics forming a triangle, eight, zero, , ellipsoid, filled with madness and Gems, you heard me, gems......tell me where can you lynch an albatross into some fatty pregnant plump roosters that you can further lynch into leg pieces and KFC-worthy delicacies.....tell me where you can find naked wizards screaming and pleading for mercy loaded inside a cannon ready to be fired just so that you can perform your stunts onto them like some freak circus clown....Tell me..................SERIOUSLY, TELL ME.

Consider this game as a one-day circus spectacle.. Buy it only if you are skilled enough. Don't buy it if things like slingshot, momentum, projectiles, kinetic energy into potential energy and vice-versa are new terms to you.

Be prepared for possible motion sickness symptoms like discomfort, nausea, vomiting, loose motions, and yes, even a loud surprise.

It's a pretty basic mobile game with some unpolished graphics, but it's controls are smooth and the level design is creative. The game progresses well without getting too tedious. If you watch the trailer then you'll know if this kind of casual game is for you.

I played this game many years ago on Xbox and it's still as fun as I remember actually. Great party game, too. On the PC, though, if you're playing on keyboard you might get frustrated once or twice because the game mainly shows Xbox controls lmao. Also one achievement they've accidentally mixed up with each other, which is why more people gained all gold helmets in campaign before gaining the copper ones lol. Besides that, the game is amazing & certainly recommendable imo.

A $5 mobile-looking action game based around a rotational momentum gimmick where you grapple to little points, rotate around them and try to predict and launch yourself at the right arc to collect gems in curve, hunt switches, get to better points and evade death. There's also some competitive grappling vs evil budget design enemies where passing through their grapple rope cuts it and you need to constantly reposition and regrapple to limit their options for recovery without falling yourself. Surprisingly despite the first impression the art design and voice-overs give this is a pretty competent $5 game.

No story. Uggo the Barbarian clears levels. Everything is limited to a single screen so level designs are pretty limited but Rotastic has the momentum-based gameplay down solidly. Although it takes some getting used to and newer gamers may find things to be random and unfair I found that I could mostly get where I wanted to go after playing for about thirty minutes. There's a lot of levels, they can be cleared in a few quick hours and the game has an emphasis on clearing levels as quickly as possible while getting the most points and mixing in little tricks like loops, mid-air stalls and dramatic drops. It's a perfect arcade set-up and good game for seeking mastery if you try it and it sinks its teeth into you. I found clearing the levels pretty agreeable, often having fun though the limitations of the map design does make them repetitive about 4 worlds in. There are a few interesting gimmicks with new tiles but they show up rarely and more would be welcome. Some gimmicks are also teeth-pullingly bad like trying to hit multiple switches in a row on a timer, or hitting a switch that opens a path for 5 seconds but has to be reset after another 15 spent waiting because the trap is covering most of the entry but isn't quiiiiite done resetting yet. Switch hunt levels basically made me groan every time and the actual sequential switch hitting parts feel like out of place laziness considering the surprising bit of passion in the rest of the game.

The graphics are better than I expected from how genuinely ugly the base character designs are. It's a crude, often gory little ugly fantasy aesthetic like Castle Crashers, though the actual background art and the smooth linework makes everything work pretty well somehow. The game sorely needs an option for sound adjustment along the lines of Music, Sounds and Voices. It's a shame, the Rotastic Guy gives a good performance and sounds like he is having a great time but hearing the same lines over and over again is probably one of the ironic punishments in Hell. The music is the hidden star of the show: nothing mind-blowing here but a bunch of surprisingly catchy and pleasant tunes.

Speaking of hidden shine the multiplayer is surprisingly good? Not genre-defining or anything and limited to local only but Rotastic has a pretty fair and consistent set of rules that lends itself to spontaneous, frantic back and forths and loud fun. At least if you can convince other people to play Rotastic with you. But I can't miss tipping my hat to the devs for doing good work here. It is a little too easy to just camp a node and let yourself rotate out to the minimum distance and wait for AI enemies to suicide trying to approach you but eh, forgivable. It at least makes things doable in the single player mode when you fight the AI who can have pretty ridiculous reflexes and speed and make the competitive jewel grabbing levels a chore.

I probably got this for less than a $1 in a Humble Bundle but I have to give credit where it is due: Rotastic is a good budget title.

Great mechanic. If the game did a little more with it's central gimmick, had a slicker interface, more variety of sounds, and slicker visuals, this could be in my top 20 local multiplayer games.

Dit is echt een leuk feestspelletje!

Probably one of the strangest games I will ever play. Dirt cheap on sale now so why not

Fun in its simplicity. Would fit perfectly on a mobile device.

It seems clear xbox port, which proves:
- USB headphones not work correctly
- resolution is not mentioned
- screen size didn't fit actual monitor.

Tags: Casual - Twitch&Arcade
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library

TLDR: Mobile game quality. One button. Conserve momentum and hook to poles as you go around level. Simple and boring and repetitive. Quota grinding objectives.

im surpised no one has disliked this exept for me. it waaaaayyy to repedative for me. its mostly only a thing you can play once or tiwce. played it once youve played it all.

New concept (at least to me).

Simple, addictive and fun.

Great simple party game. Only has local versus mode.
Best if you can hook up multiple gamepads to PC.
There is a lot more skill involved than how it first appears.
Single player is OK but best part is against humans.

Fun and challenging, the local multiplayer makes it one of the best party games I've ever played.

A mildly entertaining swinging/rotation game. It kept my attention for a few minutes.

u only have to press one button in this game. and its awesome! :)

Fun game if you can get it for under 5 bucks . If i can play multiplayer with humans instead of bots it will be 2x better but not sure if i can because this game is meant for a xbox controller so navigating menus is a pain.