I'd like the devs to look me in the eyes and tell me this wasn't vibe-coded. You've got an AI thumbnail, and some of the gameplay decisions lead me to believe that they aren't able to reverse some of the implementations the machine went with. For example....

The video playing on the store page is a bit... deceptive. You might get to be very big and roll over buildings, for the first thirty seconds. After that, the size becomes a liability, and the screen becomes awash with bullets and fire. From then on out, gameplay more resembles geometry wars where you can't shoot. If your fantasy is to roll over the town like the blob, play CARRION, or katamari. That is not here.

You can press A on the controller to grab people. Your grab range does not get bigger the bigger you are. There is a tiny cooldown on the action, so there is no real incentive to stop mashing A, since it's how you maintain health when you're smaller, which the sheer number of projectiles on the screen will force you into being. Pressing it at the wrong time might break your combo but with all the stuff on screen, who's to say. There is an X over soldiers when you are near them, which I believe has something to do with grabbing, but I can grab them so I don't know what this communicates. The auto-grabbing power-up is useless, but it at least does not actively harm you like the plasma and fire powerups do, which kill the people (who give you health when eaten!!!) when you get near them. If this wasn't rushed and thrown out the door grabbing could have been directional or a charging radial attack when the button was held down or any number of things, but instead we get this. We could have got something with a little skill or strategy or finesse. A shame.

Progression is a set of plates you have to spin and have to be done in two passes. In the pacific level I managed to clear all the goals in the first try and then got nuked. I also did some other things that I found out didn't count in the hidden challenges because, again, two passes. It feels a bit like speed bumps to slow down players to prevent the 2 hour refund window. Everything is running at 11 for so hard and long that I think the nuke at the end of levels and the challenge limit is to prevent the game from crashing and the seams tearing. At the end of my nuked run of the jungle level there were so many guys running around the map that they were zipping around, teleporting, the game unable to share the asset between so many little guys.

I want to like this game, it has a lot going for it. It wasn't until I was through the second map (a bucolic THE FOG-esque fishing town) that I realized that this game was stealthily like my favorite levels of BLAST CORPS, where you level the town. But even in '97 Rare knew that it knocking down buildings wasn't itself interesting. Do it with a fragile nuclear truck, do it with dump truck that has a hardened rear, do it with an armless mech. All this game has is a ♥♥♥♥-ton of cops shooting you.

Music is good though.

I don't know how else to describe it: This is Murder Katamari.

Roll around, gobble up puny humans, knock down buildings, cause explosions, complete objectives, and try not to die(? Can an animate murderous Meat Ball "die"?). There are bullet hell vibes in the way you dodge around gunfire, jets of flame, and bomb drops. Your Meat Ball gets bigger as it consumes and smaller as it takes damage, as it should.

Each level is a playground of objectives to complete and completing set numbers of objectives unlocks new maps. There's no meta power curve or progression that I've seen, just in-match power-ups and new objectives unlocking once a first set is complete on each level. I really like the lo-fi visual aesthetic generally but it can make some important visual cues difficult to read on certain maps. On the first level in the desert area, for example, I've lost count of how many times I've failed a run because of bomb targets that I couldn't see against the almost identically-colored ground.

It's not an issue that breaks the game. I'm having a blast and heartily recommend Rolla as a Damn Good Time(TM). But it's hopefully something that can be addressed in a future update.

I would give this game a solid middle thumb if Steam would allow that. The basic desire of the game is good, play a blob of flesh that grows the more people it consumes. The problem is the gameplay doesn't really do the fantasy justice, because every hit you take significantly reduces your mass while the game swarms you with enemies.

So instead of being a giant ball of flesh, the game quickly devoles into a hide and seek game where you mad dash from person to person in an attempt to stay alive while an army is after you.

It'd also one of those "Finish X number of tasks to unlock the next level" games. Which can be fine, but in combination with the difficulty can be pretty tedious. Especially given that you need to play some levels twice for all quests.

I also found it a bit weird that your ball of flesh isn't an algamation of mouths and faces and eyes as depicted on the cover art.

Again, the overall idea is nice, but the current balance really hurts the power fantasy you would expect.