Here are some compliments regarding Roto Force that may initially sound like backhanded compliments, but are actually just about the highest compliments I can give. First one. Roto Force is a twin-stick shooter that does not feel like a twin-stick shooter. It feels new and weird and – at first – rather claustrophobic. Rather than being given a whole arena to gad around in, you get the arena but are stuck to its inside walls. So you can do loops, left or right, aiming at spawning horrors that bubble within, but they get most of the freedom. This may seem unfair – all that space for the baddies, yet it’s out of bounds for you. Not so. You can also use a trigger to dash across this space, aiming a straight line from one part of the wall to another. This is so quick it feels almost like teleportation. It’s great and there’s loads of nuance to how it works.
Second one. I gather Roto Force was born in a game jam, and the finished game has retained that jammy energy. It’s polished and brilliantly conceived, but it has the headlong pelt and brisk enthusiasm of a sketch, something dashed out on paper and surprisingly, improbably brilliant. I reckon retaining that level of energy when you take something small and turn it into something a bit bigger is incredibly difficult. Roto Force has made the transition beautifully. It’s a lovely bit of craft, but it also has that mania to it of something that has flung itself together at deadly speed.
Third one. I realise now that I didn’t actually see much of Roto Force on my first playthrough. I don’t mean I skipped bits or missed entire levels. It’s just that the whole thing is so fast, so frantic, that my poor addled brain could only respond on the level of mechanics. I learned how to distinguish bullets I could dash through safely from bullets that would still harm me mid-dash. I learned how certain enemies and even power-ups come with little bubbles that make them immune to firepower and must first be hit with that dash. I learned that you can shoot the checkpoint marker that spins through the game after each round and it will then spawn a weapon selector so you can change things up for the next furious blast of action. I learned how some enemies swarm while some stick to the walls to stop you from ducking everything by mindlessly racing about. All of this I learned, but I didn’t see much. It was gone in a friendly blur.
