ZDNET Highlights
- Roku’s new game lets you fly a spaceship through Roku City.
- The game features iconic landmarks and Easter eggs.
- You play using your Roku remote.
The next time you turn on your Roku TV to find something to watch, you might suddenly find yourself in a gaming session instead.
On Monday, stop launched There’s a new interactive game that you can play right from your home screen called Roku City Dash. If you’re a fan of Roku City, this is one you’ll want to check out.
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The game is set in Roku City, the famous screensaver that has been decorating Roku products since 2018, and includes iconic buildings from previous iterations, Easter eggs, and more. All your favorites are here, including the volcano, sea monster, city attacking robot and lighthouse. The objective is simple: keep flying a spaceship for as long as you can (my current high score is 568 if you want to compete).
how to play
if you remember viral flappy Bird Craze from almost a decade ago, the gameplay will be very familiar. You use your Roku remote to play: simply press the up button which bounces your spaceship from its current position. You can’t move forward or backward or even up and down; You can only bounce. The game gets faster as you progress, and ends when you crash your ship into the Roku City skyline below, collide with randomly placed magnets hanging overhead, or collide with other spaceships heading in your direction.
On more than one occasion, my game ended well because my eyes were drawn to something in the background instead of focusing on an upcoming obstacle. If you just want to see the sights, I found that if you wait until the beginning when the game tells you to “Press ^ to jump”, you can see everything without worrying about keeping your spaceship aloft.
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Reaching the 200-point limit is easy enough, but things escalate rapidly from there – to get very far, you’ll have to avoid sea monster tentacles and water towers.
The game is very simple, so it’s not one you’ll spend a lot of time on. Still, if you live in a competitive household, I can definitely see families spending a lot of time trying to surpass each other’s high scores.
How to try it
To start playing, watch the Roku City Dash ad on your home screen. Click on it, download the app and you are all set. Once it’s downloaded, open the app with the play/pause button from your home screen. Additionally, you can access it from your TV’s Roku City screensaver.
