Roll Away



Roll Away is a PlayStation game in which you control a beach ball through various three-dimensional block constructs suspended hundreds of feet above various exotic locales. It lacks any plot whatsoever. Despite what anyone tells you, it was released in the PAL region first under the name Kula World. In Japan, the game is known as Kula Quest.


 * After the End: Levels 135-150.
 * Bonus Dungeon: The Final, aka Levels 151-170.
 * Covers Always Lie: Some of the screenshots on the back of the cover were from development builds containing levels and backdrops never ultimately used.
 * Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: Unless you're low on points. Every time you die, you are hit with a score penalty which is however many points you'd scored in that level so far plus an amount based on the level number. Drop below 0 and game over.
 * Dummied Out: In Kula World and Roll Away, the 9th hidden level and the tutorial level.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Spikes, lasers, "Captivators" of several varieties, fire, retractable spikes, and the timer.
 * Fan Nickname: There are a few different names for the blue-and-purple pills, depending on what people come up with.
 * Floating Platforms
 * Frickin' Laser Beams: Averted Trope. Lasers behave as they would in real life - an instant continuous beam of instant continuous death.
 * Frictionless Ice
 * Gravity Barrier: You can only change orientation on a one-square-wide path. If you hit something that's not with Frictionless Ice, you'll fall, though.
 * Gravity Screw: Every surface has its own gravity - jump, and you'll fall to the nearest surface "down" from your current orientation. If there is one.
 * Green Hill Zone: Levels 16-30.
 * Interface Screw: Red-and-yellow Lethargy Pills slow you down, speed the timer up, and cause the camera to wobble around. Blue-and-purple pills instead cause the ball to jump continuously, making your normal move distance a 2-square jump and your jump distance 3 squares.
 * Invisible Block: You can see them either if you're pretty much on them or if you're sufficiently far away, but never both at once.
 * Market-Based Title: Enforced. Creator Johannes Söderqvist has stated in interviews that the title of the game was changed to Roll Away in America to avoid a lawsuit with the band Kula Shaker.
 * Mayincatec: Levels 31-45.
 * Never Trust A Demo: On the demo of the game on console pack-in discs and magazine cover-mounts, there was a level which never made it into the game proper. This level contained sunglasses, which don't appear until really late into the game.
 * One-Hit-Point Wonder
 * Regional Bonus: Inverted; Kula Quest has the most features, but somewhat glitched controls. It was also released last.
 * Secret Level: A whole 40 of them. 30 can be reached by collecting five kinds of fruit and change the goal so that you have to hit every block to win, while 10 act like normal levels except flying through space and can be found in secret exits.
 * Shifting Sand Land: Levels 1-15, in the sky above what is obviously Egypt.
 * Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Levels 46-60.
 * Tech Demo Game: Not only did it show off The Variable Gravity Chamber in three dimensions, but it was one of the earliest PS 1 games to make use of force feedback. Also, the above interview (see Market Based Title) reveals that the developers used the full capacity of the PS 1 hardware without really trying.
 * Temporary Platform: Of the timed and crumbling varieties.
 * Timed Mission: All levels have a timer (typically 90 seconds). Certain tiles pause the timer (allowing you to look around), and hourglass powerups "flip" the timer (inverting how much time has elapsed or is left).
 * Stock Video Game Puzzles: Of the Hamiltonian, Invisible Floor, and Conveyor Belt varieties.
 * Underwater Ruins: Levels 76-90, where just about everything world-specific is blue.