Line #40 VideoGame/Roundabout


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/roundabout___title.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Let's go, Georgio!]]
3	''Roundabout'' is a top-down {{driving\|Game}} {{puzzle game}}... with a twist. It was developed and published by No Goblin and released in 2014.
4
5	''Roundabout'' follows the story of Georgio Manos, the world's first revolving limousine driver. Georgio must learn to navigate the perils of the luxury transport industry while driving a car that literally cannot stop spinning, including picking up passengers, making deliveries, nefarious French-Canadians, and falling in love. All the cutscenes are done as 1970s BMovie-style {{Live Action Cutscene}}s, consisting entirely of shots of Georgio in the front seat and separate shots of the passengers in the back.
6	----
7	!!''Roundabout'' provides examples of the following tropes:
8	* The70s: This game is set in 1977, and makes it very obvious, with references to UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter and disco.
9	* AmbiguousGender: Done in a particularly ludicrous manner. Georgio is played by a woman, Kate Welch, but the game entirely avoids pronouns or other indicators of gender when referring to the character, with other characters and the narrator using either Georgio's name (even when a pronoun would have sounded more natural) or using epithets like "kid".
10	* AmphibiousAutomobile: An upgrade allows you to float the limousine in water and drive as normal and even make short dives underwater. Touching water without it equipped is instant death, however.
11	* BizarrePuzzleGame: On the surface, it looks like a top-down driving game, but it's more of a puzzle game of trying to fit your bizarrely-moving limo through increasingly complex obstacle courses.
12	* {{Camp}}: This game relies heavily on camp for its aesthetic and humor. The whole game is made out to be a cheap, low budget 1970s thing... made in 2014.
13	* CollisionDamage: Touching virtually anything taller than the limo will inflict a point of damage.
14	* ComedicSociopathy: The player is not only actively encouraged by the game to run over pedestrians for rewards, but even ''InUniverse'' a lot of the passenger's quick solutions to problems is to run everyone in their way over (which Georgio obliges without question).
15	* CoolCar: Georgio is driving a limousine that is constantly spinning in place and can make six-foot vertical jumps. With the correct upgrades, it can also float in water, shoot traffic cones out the back, and shrink down to half its size.
16	* CosmeticAward: There are a large number of unlockable paint jobs, hats, and horns with no in-game effects.
17	* CriticalExistenceFailure: If the limo is down to its last point of health, a light bump into anything will make it explode.
18	* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: There's no penalty for death, besides a second to respawn and getting sent back to your last checkpoint, and checkpoints are extremely frequent during missions, never setting you back more than a few seconds. Overworld checkpoints can be a bit more spread out, but you're still never very far from where you died.
19	%%* DemBones: Jeffrey the Skeleton.
20	* DrivesLikeCrazy: For starters, you're driving a spinning limo through the busy streets of Roundabout. Even beyond that, however, Georgio is encouraged to drive over pedestrians, disregard stop lights and lane markers, and go off-road.
21	* EveryCarIsAPinto: Or rather, every limousine. Dying to anything, whether you've crashed into one too many cars or fallen off a cliff into the sea, results in your limo exploding in a fiery ball. This happens to [[spoiler:Ronaldo's limo when you run him off the road]] as well.
22	* ExcusePlot: You take on the role of Georgio, a spinning limo driver that picks up and drops off various wacky people while developing a love interest with Beth.
23	* FrenchJerk: Ronaldo is TheRival to Georgio, and isn't very nice to boot, [[spoiler:at least until he is killed in a car accident]].
24	* HeroicMime: Georgio, who never speaks and only communicates through nonverbal facial expressions and some hand gestures, which everyone can understand without trouble. The narrator lampshades this by saying Georgio is talented at "communicating silently".
25	* InterfaceScrew:
26	** The mission where you have to kill the triathlon competition has the screen washed in groovy colors due to Georgio taking some drugs. The same effect pops up if you use the slow-motion power up.
27	** The final mission [[spoiler:has you driving straight instead of spinning. This is actually a lot harder than it sounds since acceleration, reverse, and steering are all done on the analog stick/directional buttons and you can no longer make the limo jump]].
28	* LevelMapDisplay: There is a full map of each area, stylized like a city street-map, that is displayed whenever you pause the game.
29	* LiveActionCutscene: ''Roundabout'''s cutscenes are live-action clips specifically made to look like [[{{Retraux}} a '70s B-movie]].
30	* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: Averted for the police cars. While the cops don't spin, they are subjected to the same four-HP rule as you and will blow up if they crash into anything four times. They'll also instantly blow up if they crash into the water like you do without one specific upgrade.
31	* PaperThinDisguise: Mickey once dons a pair of those stock glasses with the bushy eyebrows and oversized nose in an attempt to hide his presence from Georgio. The most Georgio can muster as a response is an amused nod as they go to collect "Not-Mickey"'s important business things. Likewise, the Canadian tourist looks an awful lot like the Swedish tourist from an earlier mission and Georgio isn't buying it.
32	* PostProcessingVideoEffects: The whole game has a grainy, '70s video-style film overlay which can be disabled in the options.
33	* SilentSnarker: Georgio uses eye-rolls and other sorts of looks that convey the snark.
34	* SoccerHatingAmericans: The baseball coach complains that he's being forced by the school to coach soccer too, and whines that "apparently this isn't ''America'' anymore" before insinuating that Georgio ''must'' have some affinity for the sport based on the ambiguous European-ness of the name.
35	* StockFootage: Any scenes that are not interior shots of the limo consist entirely of obviously spliced together cheap stock footage.
36	* TheVoiceless: Georgio never speaks, but the passengers are somehow able to know exactly what Georgio is thinking.

Context VideoGame / Roundabout