PixlBit

When I first started playing Dillon's Rolling Western, I was pleasantly delighted. Delivering several different gaming ideas into one neat, stylistic experience, Rolling Western didn't offer anything new all to itself, but initially, it provided a nice mix of exploration and real-time battles with some light tower defense mixed in.

The mix soon grows stale.

Dillon, the Armadillo star of the title, spends his days rolling around the vast areas surrounding each town. At first, picking up items, clearing out mines, finding ancient ruins, and collecting scruffles to raise Scrogs (which act as base health in later segments) is enjoyable. During the daytime, gameplay resembles exploring things like Hyrule field in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time or checking out Peach's castle in Super Mario 64. Unfortunately, while it's fun to see a new land the first time Dillon reaches a stage, each stage must be played thrice over, with less time to collect items and prepare for the dusk segments in each consecutive day. Exploring the same land three times isn't much fun, and having a short time to rush through every action required to play well is more stressful than enjoyable, especially given that the process is very procedural on the second and third day.

Dillon is controlled with the circle pad to navigate, while building up speed and dashing is done by tapping the touchscreen and pulling back, then releasing. Exploring a stage will require expert maneuvering of Dillon as he rolls through each stage, since each stage only allots a small amount of time to gather resources and fortify defenses.

After the day comes the dusk, when Grocks, the rock-hard enemies in this western tale, spawn from their dens in the earth and toddle towards the town, aiming to barge in and eat Scrogs. The dens can be located during the daytime, and it's possible to see where the Grocks appear as they spawn. Grocks trudge forward and forward, typically only ever stopping to attack a tower or ram their skulls into the town's gate. Once all Grocks have been defeated, the dusk ends, and Dillon is able to retire for the night.

Grock attacks highlight another of the game's issues: If a tower is under attack by a Grock, it will cease to attack whichever Grock is attacking, leaving the tower relatively helpless. Since towers must be built on a handful of predetermined locations, in many cases, Dillon will have to either roll clear across the map to save a tower in distress, or he will have to let the tower fall. In all but a select few cases, it seems as though Grocks will only attack towers at random, so making decisions on which towers to defend doesn't seem to be based on strategy, but rather luck. Given how few resources the game provides to build towers, losing a tower due to unfortunate attack timing can be very costly and frustrating.

Rolling into a Grock on the map transfers Dillon onto a square field where he rolls into various enemies based on which overworld Grock was encountered. Grock fights involve charging up one of Dillon's rolls, then speeding into the enemy, tapping or holding down the stylus on the screen for added effects akin to Super Mario RPG's timed hits. Once Dillon has conquered one type of Grock once, it's likely there won't be anything new to add to the mix for each subsequent encounter. Even though a few new types of Grocks are often introduced at the start of each new stage, after the first encounter with the new type of Grock, it's clear their purpose is not to provide thoughtful, action-packed combat, but rather Grocks are meant to eat time off the clock as other Grocks trudge onward toward the base on the map. What initially looked like a fun, varied method for battling enemies quickly becomes a repetitive task that will leave players annoyed, especially when they're alerted that a Grock is attacking a tower in the middle of a battle.

I've mentioned the towers in the game, and I have to say they're the one ingredient in Dillon's Rolling Western that didn't show any initial promise (there are only two types). As the map functions like that of an RTS, some towers can be built simply to illuminate the map to follow Grock progress and positions. The rest can holster weapons in addition to providing sight. Towers are in set places, and it isn't possible for Dillon to build a tower anywhere but where there's rubble for a tower already in place. Sometimes the towers are in nice positions, others are a little more useless.

The tower weapons themselves are also gimped. Some hit in any direction near the tower, hitting a close enemy, while others aim further, but only can hit about a quarter of a circle's area. The latter type of tower can't even be aimed. Certainly the tower defense in Rolling Western leaves much to be desired, since the game's already chosen where the towers should be and how they are positioned.

In the end, Dillon's Rolling Western has some nice controls, finely made maps, and an innovative, stylus-based battle system. However, mixed together as they are now, the game just doesn't work well. It quickly becomes very repetitive, easily pushing players to look past its innovations. The end result is a game that has the makings for something that could be outstanding, but instead evens out to be about average, at best.