Kula World Review | PS1

Developer: Game Design Sweden AB
Publisher: SCEE/Psygnosis
Platform: Playstation 1

Kula World is a rare Playstation 1 game by an obscure developer called Game Design Sweden. Nevertheless, Kula World seems a very well known game amongst Playstation fans, probably due to its widely played demo published in several playstation magazine demo discs. But how is the game beyond that demo & is Kula World deserving of its cult status?

For those unfamiliar with Kula World (or “Roll Away” as it’s called in the US) it is a physics puzzle game where the player controls a beach ball with the inexplicable power to not only move on its own but reorient gravity in order to traverse floating platforms in the sky...it's all very psychedelic & abstract but this immediately becomes part of the games’ charm & may very well be why so many were drawn to it.

Though defying any real life logic, Kula World does a good job of tying its own physics rules directly to the game play. If you reach the end of a platform that does not have any sort of turn to your left or right, you can roll off the edge, changing the direction of gravity. From here you can reach either side of the platform or even underneath but the camera will always follow you as if this is now the top of the platform. You could say it's a little bit like Spider Man...if Spider Man were a sentient beach ball.

Graphically Kula World could do with a bit more variation, especially with the block platforms which could have easily seen a few more textures. The game also falls into a common trope of many 90s games, having stage themes like Hills, Egypt, Arctic etc. rather than forming its own style & rolling with it. But again, the surrealism & absurdity of the game carries it all too well to call the games art style generic.

The music by Swedish electro group Twice a Man adds to the psychedelic feel of the game in that it almost seems purposely mismatched with anything you’d imagine when thinking of a beach or a game where you play as a beach ball. This sometimes pacy, sometimes dreamy soundtrack feels like it would be more in place in a dystopian game set in a technologically advanced future. Full of saw synths and break-beats that hold a lot more production value to them than the rest of the game does, yet surprisingly the soundtrack seems to gel perfectly with Kula World despite all this.  

So what's the aim of the game anyway? Well, in Kula World you build up a score by collecting coins scattered around the level, then collecting either one or several keys that open up the exit to the next level & repeat. Not quite as simple as it sounds but more on that further down. Each level also has a piece of fruit the beach ball can eat (yes, literally eat) & if all the fruit in a set of stages is collected then the player gets one shot at a trippy bonus stage where each block must be touched once to move on. All levels have a time limit but a neat feature of Kula World are the hourglass pickups found on most stages. These literally flip the hourglass timer, meaning the later you leave it, the more time you will ultimately have to collect everything & boost your score. A subtle little risk/reward system.

As the beach ball can jump, you can of course fall off into the abyss below. You are unable to change gravity in mid air, so unless you hit something solid, it's bye bye beach ball. Luckily, the only way you can truly lose the game is if your score reaches zero. Each time your ball “dies” you lose some of your score & there are an increasing variety of hazards as you continue through the game from spikes to blocks of lava.

The most challenging & interesting of these is probably the lava, you can stay on these blocks for a few seconds but any more & you’ll melt. This forces the player to think ahead & in a situation where you might have to imagine where gravity will have to be centred in order to reach a specific destination it’s often a real brain teaser. All the while, the clock is counting down adding tension & once you solve some of Kula World's more complex set pieces you will feel the kind of satisfaction that only the best & most intelligent puzzle games can give.

A word of warning though, Kula World is one of the Playstation’s most notoriously difficult games to complete. The later stages are extremely difficult & complex, and to keep a decent score throughout the 150+ levels the game has seems an almost impossible task. This is perhaps more of a game that would be most enjoyable to jump in to every so often to inch your way forward gradually, which the games periodic save games allow. If you have the time & patience for it though, this is clearly a standout puzzle game & a unique gem in the PS1’s library.

So what what happened to Game Design Sweden? Without looking further it would seem that this company disappeared from existence having only developed this one game but digging a little deeper it seems the company changed their name to PlayCom & formed Netbabyworld, one of the first browser based gaming sites which along with sites like Newgrounds, I spent many hours on in my high school years. Though Netbabyworld is still up & running, the original team members of Game Design Sweden split.

Jens Rudberg co-founded Teenage Engineering, known for designing synthesizers used by musicians such as Bon Iver & OK Go (and judging by this interview it does seem that their products are aimed primarily at hipsters.) More intriguingly, Jesper Rudberg went on to co found Doctor Entertainment who developed Gear Up but also Puzzle Dimension, a game from 2010 which looks surprisingly familiar...a game I’m about to play! Hopefully you’ll join me next time & we can discover if Puzzle Dimension lives up to the great legacy of Kula World.

Pros:

• Intelligent, brain teasing puzzle design.

• Unique in its surrealist theme.

• Perfect for anyone craving a challenge.

Cons:

• Repetitive textures.