Have Game, Will Play: Roundabout

No Goblin has created a game about a limo driver the constantly rotates. Roundabout is an open-world(ish) 70s-style driving game full of live action cut scenes that only aurgment its inherent wackiness. You are Georgio Manos a limo driver who, despite being completely silent and incessantly rotating, finds themselves deeply involved in the lives of various clients. Rotating would not be an issue if it wasn’t for the buildings, walls and environmental objects that cause you to explode  – should you crash into them too often. However the penalty for death is just restarting at a nearby intersection.

Roundabout is hilarious. The people you will pick up, and ultimately drop-off, say the craziest things and will react your silent emoting with even crazier responses. The small circular map in the lower left shows nearby locations for potential passengers as well as customization and upgrade locations. Places to customize your limo’s hats, paint jobs and horns can be located by
finding purple wrench icons. Buying property will increase the amount of money you have to spend on paint jobs and hats. Horns are found in the environment for free. Upgrades like the ability to slow down time, shoot traffic cones or switch rotating direction can be applied at yellow wrench locations. These upgrades will open up once you have met certain requirements like running over pedestrians or traffic cones a specific number of times.

Many of the passengers will ask you to engage in small tasks like bouncing balls, harvesting crops, or knocking over mailboxes. Several of these requests will unlock and become challenges that can be selected directly from the main menu – with individual leaderboards too. One character in particular  – Mickey the mechanic, played by the Xbox Team’s E, provides Georgio with the ability to jump. This really opens up the game and adds a sense of verticality. There are also a set of mission specific goals that players can keep track of on report cards that are viewable upon mission completion.

Weaving through the streets, likely hitting people in and around them, is fun but kind of shallow. Repeatable story missions, in-game challenges, no-crash score multipliers and collectible horns give you more to do when the story element has already been completed. The end game credit-scrolling homage also serves well as icing on this goofy well-produced cake. Overall the ridiculously silly story does not last very long but had it been stretched out it would have run the risk of overstaying its welcome.

Recommendation: Worth a buy – if you enjoy laughing, live action cut scenes and funky music
Full Disclosure: This game was provided to GameEnthus by the publisher.
Genre: humor-focused niche driving game
Developer: No Goblin
Publisher: No Goblin
Platform(s): Steam
Price: $14.99

Links
http://roundaboutgame.com/
http://GameEnthus.com
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gameenthus-podcast-video-games/id286435007?mt=2

Scale:
Worth a buy – paying full price for fans of the series or genre makes sense – often includes a caveat
Worth a buy on sale – not quite full price worthy but close, – often includes a caveat
No – borrow it if you must play it
Please no – Don’t waste any time and/or money on it