Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 18

    Frustrated at my inability to make any meaningful headway in the unconventional deckbuilder Party House, I blew the digital dust and pixellated cobwebs off a cute little number that goes by the name of:

Rock On! Island (April, 1987, 1P, Strategy) "Rally your cavemen and defend your cave from waves of attacking dinosaurs."

It's not easy to tell in the art, but the main character of Rock On! Island is technically a girlboss chieftainess named Zola that's calling all the caveman shots!

This is actually a shockingly normal tower defense game with the minor twist that you're controlling an upgradeable hero unit capable of helping out all your stationary turret guys. I'm pretty sure this capable protagonist factor is regularly a thing in 3D tower defense games that have been hybridized with shooters and RPGs, like Sanctum, Orcs Must Die!, and Dungeon Defenders, meaning what freshness this title has comes more from applying modern patterns to a more classic and simple, grid-based, 2D design.

"Originally the cavemen were supposed to move around, but it was too hard to design and program."


    This history blurb strikes me as a half-truth; almost nothing would really be beyond the true developers ability to program. Each caveman unit could have very complicated pathfinding and target prioritization AI, but given the two face button limitation of UFO 50, I suspect the real problem would be letting the player feel in control and powerful without having the controls to give a lot of distinct orders.

Fictional limitations aside, the Adventure Island and Bonk influences lend the theme a lot of charm. I especially like the way the lore positions Rock On! Island as a spiritual prequel to the birs-worshipping-their dinosaur-ancestors strategy game, Avianos; a pink UFO we must assume is a Campanella being driven by either Pilot or Isabelle drops something on the island, (potentially by accident, given their tendency to crash into things.) Whatever that ship art or cargo was caused four dinosaurs to rapidly evolve "the curse of intelligence" and declare war on the humans somehow existing concurrently, Flintstones-style. Those have gotta be the gods that the eventual post-apocalyptic birds are worshipping!

Laying them out end-to-end like this underscores the clever UI spacing trick of giving them all fitting names that are seven characters long.
    Let's see, Trilock, Stegnar, Brontor, Rexadon, and Quetzal...
That's five dino-bosses, not four. So either the connection is thematic and slightly looser than I'd expect, or I just uncovered there being a secret fifth boss after the four presaged by the opening text crawl. If that's the case, my money is gonna be on Rexadon lurking in that there volcano!

That opening text crawl lacks the lavish pixel art of other UFO 50 games fictionally released before it, so might that suggest an intent to reinforce the idea that the development was "troubled" by having to cut way back on the original design's complexity? I'm reaching a bit here, but it's fun to compare the various elements between titles; both the ones that make the games feel like part of a larger whole, and the parts making them feel distinct.

[<= Day 17] - [Fifty Days of UFO 50] - [Day 19 =>]

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