Despite the large amount of puzzle titles on Xbox Live Arcade, Spidermonk Entertainment brought the three-dimensional puzzle Roogoo to Xbox 360 users. It has a surprisingly deep story for a puzzle title though. Roogoo are creatures that live on the planet Roo and depend on falling meteors from the sky to sustain life on the planet. The king of the Roogoo starts using the meteor power to build cities on Roogoo. Unfortunately this plan backfires and turns many of the planet’s inhabitants into evil MeeMoo. It’s your job to divert the meteors back to their proper place and return Roo to a peaceful paradise.

Gameplay

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The meteors that fall from the sky are actually colored shapes. The player rotates several circular platforms to match the shape with the hole for it. The player also has the option to speed up the falling shapes with the A button. Shapes occasionally have to stack up and collect with enough weight before falling to the next level. They also increase in quantity and speed as the game progresses.

There are 45 levels broken up over six venues. The opening levels can be completed fairly quickly, but the second half of the game ramps up the difficulty considerably. The game introduces a new flipping element that forces the player to flip platforms to match shapes. The game also starts releasing multiple shapes in a tiered fashion and introduces a couple enemies. The butterfly grabs shapes to move them to previous platforms and the MeeMoo sits on the platform blocking the advance of shapes. The frantic pacing of the endgame is ridiculously entertaining and challenging for veteran puzzle fanatics. The three-dimensional design requires spatial level thinking while worrying about multiple platforms.

The multi-player mode offers a chance to compete in an adversarial mode over Xbox Live. While almost identical to the single player mode, it adds the ability to use MeeMoo characters on the enemy player. The online base completely stagnant though. It’s very hard to find another Xbox Live user playing Roogoo. If you have friends over, there’s also a four player co-op mode. Each player takes control of a platform and coordinates with the team. It’s a bit too easy though.

There are 12 achievements in Roogoo for 200 gamerscore points. There are a couple funky point values in this group as well. The achievement set is weighted towards the accuracy challenges and finishing the par time on all levels. Only two of the achievements require the default difficulty and the rest can be performed on casual. The multiplayer achievements are simple to get if you can find anyone to play. Overall it’s a well balanced set of achievements that offer rewards for the casual gamer and the hardcore puzzler.

Graphics & Audio

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The visuals in Roogoo remind be of a Katamari title. The bright backgrounds highlight the colorful shapes and make the spinning platforms seem more vivid. The shape movement animations are smooth, but the frame rate takes a hit in the final levels. The artistic nature of the character design is delightful and offers a nice dose of originality to the XBLA landscape. The music is light, bouncy and works in tandem with the design elements. Some of the sound effects become annoying after several levels though.

Conclusion

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The main problem with Roogoo isn’t the quality of the title; it’s the price. The flood of puzzle releases drowns out an 800 point Roogoo and essentially kills any chance of the addictive multi-player mode flourishing in the Xbox Live community. A 400 point version of Roogoo would have been more successful with the Xbox Live user base. Check out the demo for this title before purchasing Roogoo if you enjoy single player puzzle games.