Rolando 2 is the sequel to Rolando, a game which proved that the iPhone can compete with Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s DS in the handheld console wars.

Just over a year after opening, the App Store is coming into its own. Indeed, there’s the dodgy dirge of novelty joke apps, but at the other end of the spectrum, we’re seeing publishers like ngmoco producing smart and fun apps.

Ngmoco is the publisher that picked up the original Rolando, reviewed here back in December, and pushed it in to the realms of essential iPhone titles. Rolando 2 is ngmoco’s latest release. The game features tilting puzzle platforming action with music from Mr. Scruff, and includes Plus+ network integration for achievement and score tracking.

Tap ‘n’ Tilt

Setting the scene for the game’s exotic island adventure, the opening sequence sees a deadly disease threatening the Kingdom of Rolando’s inhabitants. It’s up to the crew of the HMS Plunderful, joined by Rolando’s dozy royalty, to travel to a distant land in search of the cure.

Alongside setting up the game’s story, the playable opening sequence also acts as a handy tutorial. You play The Finger, able to control various Rolando characters and tweak elements of the environment.

Just like the original, the controls are ingeniously simple: tap an individual Rolando, or drag a box around several, then just tilt your iPhone to get them rolling. A quick swipe upwards triggers a jump, and certain yellow objects dotted around the environment can be tapped, dragged and twisted in various ways.

Rolling in New Features

Levels are a blend of platforming and puzzling — avoiding the bad guys and ensuring safe passage to the exit for the jaunty little Rolandos. Just like the original Rolando, most maps are centered around block pushing, button triggering and door opening.

Rolando 2 builds on the original, though, introducing new features and twists every few levels. This litany of loveliness takes the game from a simple platforming adventure into the realm of a multicolor spectacle.

There are the bomb trees, carrying, as nature apparently intended, a range of different bombs, including rolling sticky bombs and, less destructive but no less useful, water bombs — great for growing giant plants from tiny shrubs.

There’s the neanderthal-esque native, Rolando, who, after eating a hot chili, inflates and begins floating through the level. And there’s the Boom Finger which transforms your own finger into a digit of destruction, allowing you to off enemies and forge new paths through the levels.

If there’s one drawback to the game’s seemingly constant inventiveness, it’s that it occasionally feels a tad overwhelming — there are so many ideas crammed in, it obscures the purity of the game’s fundamentally fun tilt ‘n’ roll controls.

Ears & Eyes

On music and artwork duties, both Mr. Scruff and Mikko Walamies have returned. Walamies is behind the game’s charming characters, and he’s done so much with so little, injecting humor and character into a cast of, essentially, rolling ball faces.

The game exceeds expectations in the artwork department, too: Rolando 2 is now in 3-D, from the game’s Super Mario World-style game hub, to each individually crafted level.

Pie-eating, tea-drinking, funk-spinning Manchester DJ Mr. Scruff also features in Rolando 2. Not only do his gorgeous grooves accompany each level, he’s even got his own Music Shack where you’re able to take a leisurely roll through the soundtrack.

Diamonds & Disappointments

The iPhone’s connectivity isn’t forgotten, either. Ngmoco has integrated Plus+, a network connecting iPhone gamers with each other. You’re able to share scores, issue challenges to other players, and track in-game achievements.

There are a few issues, though. A sound is missing here and there, and certain game objects intrude on the gameplay, but it’s so incredibly infrequent.

My concern is that the constant barrage of new ideas and gameplay twists means that the game, like its petite, rotund heroes do so frequently, will become lost in a confusing jungle filled with shiny, new playthings.

I’ve heaped on praise and extolled its many magnificent moments, and yet it must be noted that there’s room, albeit a very tiny bit of room, for improvement.

Summing Up: Golden Apple Award

Rolando 2 is a wonderful game. What’s more, it exploits the iPhone as a gaming platform so effectively. It makes use of the iPhone’s user interface, never falling back on virtual control-pad buttons. There’s connectivity with Plus+ and even music from Scruff.

The characters look good enough to consume as, I imagine, some of the island’s native tribe members would do so, given half the chance. And the gameplay is fundamentally fun and consistently inventive.

All that sounds too analytical, though. It’s a convoluted way of trying to say it’s really a very good game. A more effective way of summing it up would be to give Rolando 2 TheAppleBlog’s coveted Golden Apple Award, so that’s what I’ve done.

All that’s left to say is that Rolando 2 is the new benchmark for iPhone gaming and, as such, I highly recommend that you download it.

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Alongside being the season for frivolity and festivity, it’s that special time of year when the game industry ramps up the release schedule and hustles all the latest would-be hits out their studio doors and on to our computer and console screens.

Looks as good as it plays (cartoon finger not included)

This year, sat next to the DS and PSP, a new contender has joined the handheld race: with the iPhone being touted as a proper platform for gaming, the App Store is bursting at its digital-seams with fresh-faced gaming delights.

One of these bright young things to arrive at the App Store is Rolando, a puzzler-cum-platformer created by London-based game studio HandCircus. The publishers, ngmoco, seem to specialize in releasing weird, wonderful and compulsively fun gaming experiences: the kind of games which play just as good as they look, and they look appetite-whettingly delicious.

Immediate Fun

Opening with a clever playable menu screen, Rolando starts showing you the ropes — and letting you twist, turn and touch them — from the very start. And, as you progress through the game, the main menu grows, becoming more vibrant, adding new toys and revealing characters hidden in the shadows. A seriously smart and considerate move by Hand Circus, in that fun pervades the traditionally mundane menu screen.

The visual design, by Finnish artist Mikko Walamies, is a joy to behold, surpassing the mass of half-baked twaddle prevalent in the App Store. The characterization is particularly accomplished. It’s as if the little guys and gals always existed and you’re just dropping in on their ice-cream colorful world to help out. The good guys are amusing, smart and yet vulnerable. The bad guys are dark, horrid, grumbling beasts.

Tilt ‘n’ Touch

Big Puzzles and Big Bad Guys

Each level is a blend of physics-based puzzle solving and traditional platforming, rolling up the most effective features of other games – Lemmings, Katamari Damacy, Mario.

 Across the ‘net there have already been utterances of Rolando’s similarity to Sony’s flagship PSP-title Locoroco. If anything, this is somewhat flattering for both parties: Rolando’s actual control and gameplay mechanic is a leap beyond that of Locoroco’s, integrating the latter’s simplicity and rendering it more so intuitive with touch commands and tilt control.

Conveyor belts, bombs and diamonds at the fireworks factory

And for all it’s simplicity, the controls actually achieve a satisfyingly effective level of versatility; tap and drag to select a few Rolandos, tilt to get them rolling and then swipe up to make them jump. And just touch an object to interact with it, such as tapping the button on a cannon to release a bomb or cranking a lever to open a gate.

A typical stage will have you aiding your merry band of Rolando’s across spikey pits, through mechanical doors, past slidey gates and over rivers of gunk, and possibly escorting Rolandoland’s snoozing King.

Scruffy Tunes

Manchester's Mr. Scruff

Not only am I from the UK, I’m a Manchester lad. I’m from the city that brought you The Smiths, 10CC, Autechre, Joy Division (and Factory Records too) and Jim Noir.

I’m exceedingly proud of the musical heritage of my hometown and particularly pleased to tell you that the music for Rolando was provided by Manchester’s very own Mr. Scruff.

Plucked from Scruff’s own back catalogue, the soundtrack fits the game perfectly — like the last piece of a funky jigsaw. Taking away the sound, the game is an outstanding specimen compared to its piers — colorful, joyous, moreish — ngmoco and HandCircus went above and beyond the call of duty by incorporating Scruff’s sounds, bringing even more polish to an already gleaming gaming experience.

Summing Up

Turning the Cogs

Not all of you will share my immense enthusiasm for Rolando.

Not everybody may thrill at the occasionally devious and frequently challenging puzzles or reminisce at the retro joys of hopping, skipping and jumping through dark caverns and over perilous spikey pits.

Nor will everybody grin giddily when the good guys get cheeky and the bad guys mutter their comic threats and I’m afraid that not everyone will groove along to the soundtrack, despite it’s ear-wormingly catchiness.

Cheeky Rolandos

But, fortunately, I know that most of you will: you’ll thrill and reminisce while grinning and grooving all the way through Rolando.

You’ll also pick up on many more of the multitude of delights which I failed to mention here (both because an article should only be so long and because it’s such a pleasure to discover these things for yourself).

At the end of it, you’ll tell your friends, you’ll tell folk sat near you on the bus, you’ll tell everyone with an iPhone in earshot, because this is the kind of game that makes you feel good. And because what we have here is the benchmark for what a complete iPhone (or touch) gaming experience could be and, furthermore, should be.

Rolando ($9.99) is available now on iPhone and iPod touch at the App Store.

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