A copy of Kula World will set you back over £80 – and that’s for a not very good condition version. Now, I’m not saying that Sky Roll! is anywhere near as good as Kula World.
But a copy of Sky Roll! on the Xbox is as cheap as chips at just 79p, some 100 times less than a banged-up copy of Kula World. And it definitely isn’t 100 times worse either.
If it isn’t immediately obvious from that introduction, Sky Roll! is very reminiscent of Kula World and Super Monkey Ball. You control a ball around a series of obstacle courses high up in the sky. There are coins to collect, some gold and some red. Gold coins allow you to buy new skins for your ball, and red coins are related to achievements. There is no story, no characters, one piece of music throughout, and can be completed within an hour. But did we mention it is only 79p?
Sky Roll! starts easily enough, and the first level is just a straight line of tiles to roll your ball along. And that easy gameplay continues for about half of the game’s 60 main levels. But by the third world, a neon inspired place of darkness, things do get tricky. Each level gives you three lives to complete it, and many later levels have a checkpoint for you to restart from. The punishment for losing all your lives isn’t too harsh, it just means you need to start from the very beginning.
Alongside the 60 main levels are 60 mirrored levels, but with a twist. These aren’t just mirror images of the levels, the controls are also flipped for a real test of your abilities. But by then, you should have unlocked all of the achievements in Sky Roll!, so the choice is yours as to whether you attempt them or not.
Any physics platformer that is worth its salt must have good ball physics as well. And Sky Roll! does have ball physics. That much is true, but there are a few quirks to them. However, most of these actually work in your favour. For example, even when teetering on the edge, you can usually find some purchase off the lip or the corner of the platform to keep yourself from falling off completely. Same too for being hit by one of the game’s hammers, found in the later levels; if you are quick enough you can slide off these to safety rather than being pummelled off the platform.
But there has been one more interesting thing I found with Sky Roll!; something that was unexpected. It will be tricky to explain without detailed images and annotations, but I will try my best.
Level 36 has a series or tight turns on a sloped platform. Now, at this point I will say that the camera isn’t exactly the best in Sky Roll!, with many objects blocking your view with no steps in place to prevent this from happening. You can rotate to get a better view, but here is where I found the unusual situation. When facing the slope with the camera, to get the ball to stop rolling I would need to hold up on the thumbstick. When the camera was behind the ball, I had to pull back on the thumbstick, but at a cost of having a restricted view. However, pulling the thumbstick back gives you much better traction than holding it up. By that I mean that the ball would typically fall off that sloped platform with much less speed if I tried to hold the thumbstick up. If I pulled it down, the ball could be much faster and still have space to spare when slowing down on the platform.
Knowing this made the game much easier, as any time I had to slow down quickly I just made sure the camera was in the right place.
Perhaps this piece of information is only useful to those daft enough to speedrun it, but try it for yourself. Did we mention that Sky Roll! is only 79p?
Completing a level grants you either a coin bonus or a new skin for your ball. There is a shop where you can buy specific ones you like the look of, and there is a decent selection, including a Kula World-esque beach ball. But being granted a new skin as a reward will overwrite whatever you had equipped previously. You could easily go back and equip your preferred one, but by the time you had scrolled through all the options, you could have finished another couple of levels.
Listen, let’s not beat around the bush here. Sky Roll! is a very, very basic game with absolutely no original ideas of its own. Yet it is still half decent and for the sake of 79p, I dare say you’ll have a bit of fun with it. It would be easy to tear it apart on its short length, lack of originality or modes and dodgy physics, but look at where it has priced itself. For an hours’ work and 79p, you’ll have another 1000 Gamerscore in your pocket, and that’s all some people will want.
Sky Roll! deserves more than that. Not much more, but a little bit.
Did we mention it is only 79p?
Sky Roll! Tilts and Turns its Way onto Xbox and PC for just 79p! – https://www.thexboxhub.com/sky-roll-tilts-and-turns-its-way-onto-xbox-and-pc-for-just-79p/
Buy Sky Roll! on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/Sky-Roll/9NF5DRRZP6SV
