Rooftop Rage : cana-what, now?

Rooftop Rage Windows Phone

You rush forward, the city rooftops before you, certain death at your heels. Survival is impossible, but for now you live, caught in the exhilaration of the moment. Every step means another moment of blessed life, another moment stolen from the dark. You cannot deny Death, but you can stall him – and stall him you shall, though it takes every aspect of your endurance, your concentration, to do so.

[NOTE]The dev has decided to make the game FREE : get the free version of RoofTop Rage from here[/NOTE]

That’s the hook of the game Canabalt, the hugely successful flash game released a couple of years ago. A game with uncountable imitators, and today sees the release of yet another title: Rooftop Rage. Another game of jumping across rooftops, over obstacles and through windows, Rooftop Rage deviates from Canabalt’s template in a number of ways. Where Canabalt presented the player with a gorgeous, atmospheric, monochrome urban sprawl to run through, filled with incidental detail and sumptuous animation, Rooftop Rage goes for a blocky, 8-Bit technicolor world of sensory overload. Where Canabalt had the player running from a nameless doom, with the ruined city offering your only clues to its nature, Rooftop Rage has its danger on screen: a massive mincing machine, which happily destroys everything you pass. Where Canabalt’s presented a wasteland, with only birds for company, Rooftop Rage merrily populates its rooftops with pigs, turnips, stars and men. Plus the occasional dinosaur monster… thing.

In other words, Rooftop Rage is Canabalt’s younger, gaudier and ever-so-slightly drug-addled cousin. If Canabalt had come out in the 1980s, Jeff Minter might have made a game like this. Admittedly, his version would have had more llamas and sheep, and gone far further into the depths of insanity. Still, it’s nice to be reminded of that ‘80s bedroom coder aesthetic every once in a while.

Rooftop Rage may lack the atmosphere and elegance that made Canabalt such a success, but it does its best to make up for it with noise and energy. Not only do you earn points for survival, but for every pig you launch into the mincing machine – and bonus points if you manage to launch the pig into a jet pack-wearing human, causing them both to tumble into the grinders. As if navigating rooftops wasn’t hard enough, why not throw in the occasional boss fight – a deadly creature which spits goop at you. Giant panes of glass are fun enough, but what about giant golden panes of glass, which boost you across the landscape? The occasional jetpack, allowing you to jump in mid-air? Green toxic waste, which slows you down when running on it? Oh, and you trail rainbows. Of course.

Brash, dumb, and fun. Rooftop Rage keeps Canabalt’s thrill of survival against all odds, even as it piles on absurdity and colour. This is a less ‘fair’ game than Canabalt – things like the golden panes of glass sometimes launching you into off-screen chasms can irritate. But its joie de vivre shines through – this is a game that wants you to like it, and that counts for a lot. It seems a bit much to charge for a title that owes so much to another, free game, but at 79p complaining too much would seem churlish. A great little throwaway game.

Rooftop Rage Gameplay Video

Rooftop Rage Screenshots

Version Under Review : 1.1.0.0

There is a trial version available and the full version is available for $0.99, the trial is limited to one boss battle (once you reach a score of around 2000-3000), after the boss you collide with a unbreakable red wall which will cause you to die in the blades unless you purchase the full game. The game contains Awards which can be accessed and unlocked only in the full version.

Our Rating for Rooftop Rage

Scan this QRcode with Bing vision ( Hit the hardware Search button and click on the small icon that looks like an eye ) on your Phone to download the App to your phone.

Price : $0.99