Ball-rollers or marble-rollers are some of my favorite games and they’ve gained a lot of traction over the years. We’ve seen Marble Blast Ultra lead to games like Marble It Up, and all of them owe a debt to Super Monkey Ball now or Marble Madness in the distant past for kickstarting the genre as a whole while Monkey Ball kept it alive in a different form. One game that doesn’t get much love, however, is the PS1 gem Kula World, which was released in North America as Roll Away.
This blended panel-by-panel ball rolling alongside environments you could roll around and solve puzzles. Every stage had an end goal, but many also had things you needed to collect and switches to hit in order to find the exist – let alone get everything for a completionist thrill. It’s a game that I adored in demo form back in the day, and since its release have enjoyed in full, but there’s never been anything else quite like it until now.
The panel-by-panel play is something no one has tried to replicate until now and Axyz does a fantastic job of retaining the core gameplay feel of Kula World, but doing so with a more modern coat of paint and better controls. Like Kula World, Axyz also benefited from a nice demo – only this time during the Steam Next Fest, as it showcased a healthy amount of stages and a nice gameplay loop that is right at home for Kula World veterans.
The panel-by-panel play is something no one has tried to replicate until now and Axyz does a fantastic job of retaining the core gameplay feel of Kula World
The core gameplay is basically exactly the same, but with far better visuals and a UI that aims to replicate classic PC operating systems of the late ’90s. Like Kula World, you need to carefully move along the tracks because every side of a surface can be rolled across and you want avoid things like spikes – resulting in finding alternate paths to gather goodies. Trial and error is the name of the game and that adds to the thrill of completing stages faster either on the first go-around or even on the second.
Earthy Turmoil
Some stages will give you more trouble than others, but the demo showcased a fantastic showcase. Axyz has a nice launchdiscounttaking it to $10.19 from $11.99 – offering a 15% discount right out of the gate until April 3. Anyone who loves a good marble roller will enjoy it quite a bit and if you loved Kula World, you’ll be in heaven.
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