Summary

RolyPoly is an addictive little game by the fine folks at Nitrome games. Try it out:

• Original RolyPoly Flash Game

Improvements

• Smackman character!

  • The hedgehog they use in the game is pretty boring. All it does is turn into a ball. Smackman, on the other hand, would have all kinds of emotions as he flew around the level and saw impending danger! He'd be much sassier too.

• More fluid rendering engine

  • The Flash version lags a bit.

• Better controls (mouse)

  • The major problem I found with the controls is that your mouse keeps accidentally going out of the window, causing your little hedgehog to inadvertently fly into spikes. Solution: make it full-screen, and instead of having to move your mouse in circles to spin the wheel, bind the mouse's X-axis to the rotation of the wheel so all you have to do is move the mouse left and right.

• Hardware spinner

  • A hardware spinner would be even cooler than a mouse! You'd have a little wheel that would be mapped directly to the rotation of the wheel. Here are some nice looking ones:

    • How to build a spinner out of a hard-drive and a mouse

    • Big list of spinners you can buy/build

    • SlikStik Tornado Spinner (USB/PS2; best on the market @ $70US)

Resources

• Box2D Elastic Springs

Sketches