Roller Polar Review

Roller Polar is a quick-playing, brutally punishing, casual arcade game in which players have to control a bear rolling on top of a giant snowball as it dodges moose, trees, rocks, and other hazards that could knock it off. With its difficulty, ease of replayability, and low high scores, the game seems inspired by titles like Flappy Bird. And players' tolerance for games of that ilk will largely determine their enjoyment of Roller Polar.

Each round of Roller Polar begins with players jumping over simple things like rocks and trees before the difficulty ramps up to include snowmen, moose, overhead birds, and more. To vary up the jumping action the game allows for both single and double-jumping, both of which are performed by tapping anywhere on the screen. The goal of is to get as far as possible without getting taken out by one of these obstacles. There are no continues, checkpoints, or ways to keep some persistent progress between games. There's just a high score, and increasingly honed reflexes are the only way to keep getting further.

As players get farther, patterns of new and old obstacles will force them to deal with timing jumps more precisely - to the point that they'll eventually need to leap between two separate snowballs, which also indicates an increased level of speed.

Although the game is very reminiscent of Flappy Bird, it is definitely easier. The jumping mechanics are much more forgiving than the flapping/falling, though getting to a double digit score can be challenging (there's even an achievement for doing so). That being said, Roller Polar is still very much one of those games, with little more to offer than repeating everything from square one on each playthrough.

Since it's free, Roller Polar serves up ads every once in a while between rounds, but it does offer an in-app purchase ($1.99) to get rid of them. Aside from that though, there's nothing stopping players from playing it to their heart's content.

As someone who never really understood the appeal of games like Flappy Bird in the first place, Roller Polar doesn't do much for me. It's a totally fine game, but it just doesn't seem to have much to it. I guess it may be good for people wanting a super-simple casual game on their phone, but Roller Polar is too shallow to feel meaningful or particularly compelling.