What is it?
The basic rules are the same as SameGame (you can remove adjacent blocks of the same color), but the goal is slightly different. The playing field is supposed to represent a burning house, and your first goal is to rescue the tenants on the roof. For that, you must lower them far enough. The marine can escape from a height of five floors, the kangaroo from four, the pogo kid from three, the bulldog from two, the rat from one, while the old lady has to be lowered all the way to the ground. (There are no old ladies on the screenshot, since they appear only in hard difficulty setting, and the shot was taken at medium.)
If you manage to rescue all the tenants, you have won the game.
But you can still keep on playing, trying to remove as many rooms
as possible. The game keeps a low score.
But it is completely
irrelevant how many rooms you remove in one turn, or how long it
takes you to win the game.
Roof Rats is one of those games that derives its appeal for a good part from its setting and details. Another example is Ganja Farmer. The Paratrooper-style gameplay is tried and tested, sure, but it's the idea that you are protecting your herb from the Man that sets the game apart, as well as the spoofy Reggae background music. Here, while the concept of rescuing the tenants is not all too convincing, it's just fun to watch when the marine takes out his rope and climbs down or the pojo kid bounces off-screen. Add a simple but suggestive background tune (which, unfortunately, is hidden away somewhere), and you have one addictive game.
Roof Rats is not a standalone game. It is part of After Dark Games, a collection of eleven games in total (you can see the icons at the bottom of the screenshot), ranging from simple Solitaire to a weird Glider clone featuring the famous Berkeley flying toaster. But none of them can compare with Roof Rats.
Well, if you're looking for this reviewer's favorite game of the bunch, here it is. This game could almost be called an inverse of the popular titleTetris. The point of the game is to remove groups of like-colored blocks (rooms) so that the people (and dogs and kangaroos and…) can get off the roof safely. Each time you remove a set of blocks the set above that falls, lining up a new set of colors. Each different character has a different height at which they can escape the rooftops. For example, the Marine rapels down the side at a relatively high point (giving out ahooYAas he does), while the lowly mouse can only scurry away when it's an inch off the ground. Once you've saved all the roof-goers, you must try to eliminate the remaining blocks. I personally got it down to three, and I'd like to see any of you do better, so nah!
Roof Rats is a tetris style puzzle game. There's a condemned building and on the roof of it are a bunch of tenants who obviously didn't pay attention to the notice to evacuate the building. It's your job to blow up each room in an order designed to allow the bulldogs, big ugly men, rats, silly kids and kangaroos to jump off safely. The trick is that you can only blow up rooms that have adjacent rooms of like colors. tough, huh?
