This game is just Awesome if you have a love for pinball and RPGs, then this is an excellent combination and choice. Why didnt this idea ever get thought of earlier. I praise these developers for coming up with this game combination. I hope they can bring more pinball RPGs storys to this ever growing gaming world.And I have absolutely no regrets at all buying this fun game, at the price it currently is. Also i hope my Sweet Sincere Friend with whom i gifted a special copy to for christmas, feels the same way about this fun game. I thankyou for being such a lovely friend, please enjoy this game when you can and have a lovely Christmas, and that goes for everyone. Happy gaming ;D

A great game! What a fantastic concept.
I am working through it with my 9 year old. He likes the "Old school" games... But for him old school might be anything before mincraft.
For the most part the concept is quickly grasped, but there is enough newness to the play that there are still challenges and a sense of progression. It is not a grind.

It's a cool idea, and maybe if they get the chance to iterate on it with another game it would be better. Unfortunately, I don't think this game is going to make pinball fans or those looking for an RPG happy.

For starters, there's just not much there in terms of what you'd expect from an RPG. You can buy some upgrades that make very little difference to how the individual balls perform, and you cand spend a bunch of gold on buying another party member. That's about all. It's very thin if you're looking for any kind of character customization, which could be forgiven if the other aspect of the game - the pinball - was stellar.

It isn't. This game's idea of a good pinball table seems to be stationary targets that you have to hit over and over - and over and over- and when you finally "kill" one, another comes out to stand in the exact same place. Instead of interesting shots and modes like you'd expect in any real pinball table, you get to bounce off these targets a few inches from the flippers again and again. Honestly, the weakest tables in Pinball FX are more entertaining.

Like I said, I like the concept. I hope either these developers or someone else gets to take another crack at it, and before they do I hope they play some better pinball tables.

Really great use of oddly disparate game mechanics. I'd like to see more, very fun.

I was turned on to this game following a few Let's Plays on Youtube. It's certainly a unique premise, pinball RPG. Oddly enough, it works. It works really well. The game mechanics work. The creators spent a lot of time on making it work and it shows. Once you play a few levels, you'll be asking yourself "now, why didn't I think of a pinball RPG?" it's that well designed.You will receive quite a bit of enjoyment from the game. The story is good enough for a generic fantasy setting. The characters are strangely compelling for little balls. WIth little dialogue, the creators gave these little balls more character and development than most "character-driven" AAA releases. There are a few moments that removed me from the game (the Baron's chamber sees a large difficulty spike out of nowhere, you can't see hired swords abilities before you spend the 5000 gold, some enemies take an extraordinary amount of damage, and most of the voice acting is poor but not terrible). I bought this game for $7.50 and it certainly was worth my money. I hope it sees more development. I'd pay for DLC and even a sequel.

This is a great game, but wow is there a gigantic difficulty spike at the very end. They've added a checkpointing system to alleviate it, but the last boss is just insane compared to the rest of the game.

See, for most levels you're able to use any of your characters, because they all have different uses. In the last stage though, there's a series of three different levels, each with three boss enemies - and only one of your characters is capable of dealing significant damage to them.

For the first two bosses, that's fine; you just clear out the board a bit, then pull out the special character and poke them until they die. If your special character dies, it's no big deal; you can just gather mana with someone else and revive them. It's not fast, but you make consistent progress.

For the third boss, though, you just can't do that. This boss has two special attacks: he does something which causes a lot of damage, and he does something else that drains your mana.

This means that instead of the normal repertoire of six or seven characters, you've only got three that matter: the healer, who restores your health; the ranger, who is immune to mana drain; and the special character, who's the only one that can significantly hurt the boss.

If any one of those three dies, you're boned. Healer's gone? Well, you're going to take a lot of damage, which means you're more likely to lose another character. Special character dies? Now you're playing catchup, because the person who does the next-highest damage to the boss deals 1/5th the damage. Ranger dies? You might as well give up. You're going to have a really hard time building up enough mana to restore another character, because there's no mana charms on this stage and to reach the mana gathering spots you need to go around the boss.

And going anywhere near the boss is super dangerous - if you ever make the mistake of hitting him head on, he smacks your character with a friggin Chaos Dunk and they go flying straight into the middle gutter. It's really, really hard to recover from that.

Overall though, this is a great game - it's just a pity the difficulty went from Super Mario World to Dark Souls over the course of one boss.

It was fun for a while, then got very repetitive. Having beaten it the game seems to have very little replay value. The RPG element is superficial. The graphics are pleasing but for me at least the voiceover was wince-inducing.

I am confused by those confused by the difficulty of the final levels. They aren't that hard, they just involve noticing one thing that the game very blatantly draws your attention to. I played through some of the bonus levels and they are pretty dull as well.

That said, it was funner than not playing a superficially-RPG themed pinball game.

Just beat the game. Pretty good. Nice story, although a little generic and cliche. cool tables. interesting combination of rpg elements. All the talk of the final level being too hard is a little much. Took me three tries to beat the final boss. Frustrating yes, impossible no. I recommend to any pinball or rpg player.

First off, I'll admit that my review is somewhat biased because I have a nostalgic love of pinball games.

But to combine a pinball game with RPG elements, and story-telling, is pure genius.

PROs:
- good voice acting (really makes the characters come alive)
- excellent inclusion of story and story-telling
- beautiful integrated art style with pinball maps
- can swap between characters in mid-game to utilize character skills
- RPG upgrades to characters to increase skill set
- EXCELLENT boss battles (really need to be creative on how to utilize your characters)

CONs:
- very short game (spent 8 hours playing, but a good chunk of that time was spent grinding for gold in the arena maps)
- sudden arena "round change" pauses (game pauses in the middle of game to signify round progression, which sometimes blocks view of ball, and leads to frequent gutter balls)
- annoying menu navigation (switching between story and arena modes, forces you to wait for opening title screen to load every single time)
- limited RPG elements (RPG elements are a great concept, but having just a handful of pre-determined upgrades, and limitless gold to grind to purchase upgrades, limits a player's creativity on how to build class characters)

Overall, a very fun and at times challenging game, with LOTS of room to develop and grow. I'm hoping that this is just the first of many RPG-Pinball games.

Wow, where has the past 16 hours of my life gone. What a fun game. Being a huge pinball fanantic I couldnt wait for this to be released and jumped on it. Once I began, I couldnt stop playing, it is now 8:40am. Must sleep.

Very Challanging multi level platform pinball. You have to think of which ball to use to get through some of the levels.

I really hope there are more in the future.

First Impressions:

"Rollers of the Realm" is a family-friendly pinball game with light RPG elements. Most of the major characters are represented via pinballs and each have different stats in terms of size, density, and etc. It's very easy to jump into and play and I'll be the first to admit that I absolutely suck at real-life pinball. Ideal for gamer families who may be looking for something nonviolent and lighthearted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DraZnH4O67I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM-MXrgv_Z4

Very well-implemented RPG system with the basic pinball goodness. Surprisingly deep, and surprisingly skill-based. The changing of characters as different balls works very well and the idea of mana and the skills avaliable make the game interesting to play. With items to collect,and various different level objectives, it's been really fun for the first several hours without me stopping.

http://youtu.be/TRfPpyACtWI

Honestly, if you're a pinball fan, and an RPG fan, this game is pretty much up your alley at 10 bucks.

Rollers of the Realm is a pinball game, but it's not one that I've ever seen before, where the game is a character driven adventure pinball game, or to put it in another word, an Role Playing pinball Game. Just a note, i didn't finish the game, played through half of it.

Now I'm not a major pinball person, only playing the space pinball game that was pre-installed on Windows XP, playing it when i should have been doing my school homework, and that was just a fun score-based pinball game, but with Rollers of the Realm, it has a focus on story, characters, with abilities and damage/healing numbers. Also, your balls are your characters, with good voice acting (fully voice acted by the way), and with different looks, size, and physics.

Now from what I've played, and the future levels I've yet to finish, and the extra replayable content after that, priced at 10$, i see this, as a person who only played a digital pinball game years ago, as a good purchase if you're into pinball games, with this one having a considerably big, and arguably good, different approach too it.

Shamless link to original post.

Rollers of the Realm is one of those games that seems to be based on a dare. "What if we combined an RPG with a Pinball game," which needless to say is a rare thing to see in games Much like Puzzle question and other fusion games before it, pinball or no, the real question is "does the fusiion work?"

The short form? Rather well.

Rollers of The Realm has the characters represented as balls. Some are small and fast,others big and slow. Some are easy to put "tilt" on, some can't be redirected so easily. All of them have a unique special ability. Surprisingly, this works, and allows you to develop a lot of strategies, and solve puzzles by . . . forgive me . . . juggling the right balls.

The game is as such - go to an area, enter a board. There you can find all sorts of things you have to deal with to win - enemies to attack, obstacles to overcome, puzzles to figure out environments to navigates, and other challenges to face. Ramming a character into an enemy attacks it. Striking some objects raises mana to use special abilities. Some characters can even derive mana or gold from some targets in the field. And there are seemingly inaccessible areas that you can get to with the right combination of characters, wits, and flipper-usage. There are also keys to find and treasures to unlock.

By the way, characters who exit the field often die (until ressurected) and flippers can be damanged. So you don't always have time to just sit there and try things over and over, and losing a ball can be very traumatic to your strategy.

Surprisingly it works - it's a pinball puzzler with some resource management and combat-like elements - and, of course, boss monsters. It also allows for bite-sized play as any one board doesn't take very long, and they can be revisited for more loot and exploration.

At it's core, it's pretty clever, but there's also an actual plot and character backstory. Nothing epic, but it adds to the game as characters have motivations you understand - and as this is a game that is representing characters as colorful spheres, kind of needed. The voice acting is decent to good, and thankfully lacks overdramatic elements - plus the characters sometimes make witty remarks during play that provide more atmosphere.

The game does lack in a few areas - character status screens are minimal and special abilities aren't always well explained. Font choices on status screens are also a bit tough to read. A few boards are rather dull or their layots not always clear. Documentation is virtually nonexistent (even though, yes, it's basically RPG Pinball, so its a bit simple).

However, these are minimal criticism in that, for $9.99 American you get an excellent fusion RPG that makes its seemingly insane premise work well, nicely done visuals and character portrayals, and enjoyable pinball puzzles to solve. A precice game that delivers exactly what is promises, does it well, and throws in some surprises.

A definite buy for fans of unusual RPGs and game mechanic experiments, and something to consider for a gift for people with a taste for the unusual.

If you've ever wondered what a combination of pinball and an RPG would look like, the way I see it you have two options: play this game, or track down a copy of Pinball Quest for the NES.
Now, that said, this game has an interesting combination of pinball gameplay (it IS a pinball game, after all), RPG elements (like experience points, special abilities, different characters, and new gear), and puzzles (like figuring out how to get to certain areas of a given pinball table/level. As far as I can tell (I'm just about an hour in right now), the storyline is pretty much stock fantasy, but I wouldn't come to a game like this looking for complex moral judgements and deep allegories for our time. The characters are all fully voiced, and the acting is pretty good. The character art is fantastic. The level designs are easy on the eyes as well.
Considering the price vs. the amount of fun to be had in this game, Rollers of the Realm is a pretty good buy.

On another note, I'm finding the gameplay somewhat reminiscent of Wizorb - if you've played this game, RotR is probably right up your alley as well.

A fun twist on pinball, rpg, and puzzle games. Great price for the amount of gameplay too.

Now, I'm not one who normally reviews games. I pick it up, poke it 'til most of the fun comes out, and move on to other work or play. Most of the time, I don't really feel like a game would be worth reviewing--I'd either be one of the many, or I wouldn't be able to review it in a positive manner.
Rollers of the Realm made me rethink this, for 2 major reasons. Now, I'm a pessimist at heart, so I'll start with the lesser reason first:
This is not a long game. Normally, I wouldn't have an issue with this in an indie game for $10, but I draw the line here. I'm just beginning to feel like I know what's the what in the game, only to discover my playthrough is over 90% complete, and I STILL don't know what the handy hired help skills do. So let this be an illustration: the amount of gameplay here is small, but the depth is huge. They set out for RPinballG, and they succeeded. Clever/smooth mechanics, and they succeeded. Graphics that don't leave you frustrated halfway through with mind numbing repetition? success.

Now, why is being short an issue to me if this game has so much going for it? It's actually because of Reason #2: The levels, the gameplay, every second of my first playthrough of this game was one thing: exquisite (okay...there might've been a little corny voice acting...but what fantasy game doesn't have it?), and lo and behold, I go back to see some of the unique levels/scenarios again, but find them to be locked (all bosses except the final ones can only be defeated once each playthrough). In case I haven't been clear: I want the story to go on, I'm actually interested in these characters which aren't just cookie-cut archetypes. I'm interested in a puzzle that challenges my MIND, instead of my reflexes...(some of them were close), but most of all, it seems like Phantom Compass mastered the mechanics they wanted to use, applied them well, but hasn't gotten to use everything in its bag'o'tricks yet.

--
Eagerly awaiting DLC/Sequel!

Love it! A great mix of genres -- everything fits together so nicely. This isn't just a pinball game with medieval artwork slapped on top, the pinball mechanics are actually tied into the theme in very clever ways. Really happy with this game so far.

Phantom Compass have merged 2 genres and have created something greater than the sum of it's parts. The presentation is top notch and for only 10 bucks it's definitely a must-own. I'll be gifting this one for the holidays.

My timeline: Pinball Dreams, 3d Ultra Pinball, Adventure Pinball, Rollers of the Realm.

If the first three pinball games sound like you, buy Rollers you'll love it.