Rollers of the Realm

Rollers of the Realm mixes pinball with a fantasy action RPG, so the main thing is still keeping the ball alive while it ricochets through ramps, bumpers, and targets. By our assessment, that hybrid idea gives it a neat identity and a lot of immediate motion, since every table is also a battlefield. The limit is obvious too: once the novelty of the mash-up settles, the game depends on how much you enjoy pinball physics carrying the whole experience. In practice it asks for quick reactions and a willingness to read the table more than the characters. It sits closer to a clever genre experiment than to a deep RPG or a pure pinball game, which makes it easier to admire than to call broad. Rollers of the Realm is the sort of thing for players who want a strange combination, not a tidy one.