Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

What Comes Around offers a deceptively simple core loop: guide a little raccoony homunculus as it scampers across a tiny, spherical planetoid. The world rolls beneath you like a geographic treadmill, and your mission is to dispatch the endlessly emerging gophers by dropping walnuts on them. Each walnut plummets straight through the planet—crushing any enemy in its path—before emerging on the opposite side, giving you a clever way to hit foes you can’t see at first glance.

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You have an infinite supply of walnuts but a deliberately limited fire rate, forcing you to balance aggression with precision. The combined health/time bar constantly ticks down, so every second counts. Holding back your shots can buy time as you wait for gophers to line up, yet firing too freely risks running out of health-time before you clear the next wave.

Sprinkled throughout the waves are fruit bonuses that restore health-time or grant invulnerability—just what you need when the earth itself sprouts a helmeted “generalissimo” gopher immune to your regular walnuts. Learning when to cash in these power-ups becomes a strategic exercise in resource management, especially as later waves introduce tighter timing windows and faster enemy burrows.

Graphics

Visually, What Comes Around channels classic storybook charm with modern pixel polish. The tiny planetoid evokes The Little Prince’s poetic solitude and nods to the boss fight aesthetic seen in Raphael the Raven’s Yoshi’s Island encounter. Soft pastel skies and lush miniaturized flora contrast beautifully with the darker soils and burrow openings where gophers pour forth.

Your raccoon avatar is rendered with endearing detail—fluffy tail, round ears, and expressive eyes—while each gopher sports just enough animation frames to feel lively without cluttering the screen. The generalissimo gopher’s helmet glints menacingly, making it instantly recognizable among the scurrying hordes.

The rotational effect on the planet is smooth and seamless, enhancing immersion as you run “around” your world. Background layers shift subtly to create depth, and walnut drop trajectories leave faint particle lines so you can track your shots mid-flight. The heads-up display is minimal, showing your remaining health-time bar and score without intruding on the action.

Story

What Comes Around trades a traditional narrative for emergent storytelling through gameplay and setting. There’s no lengthy exposition—just a lone raccoony homunculus besieged by cavorting gophers on a miniature world. In this pared-down universe, the recurring conflict itself becomes the story: can you break the cycle of invasion and survive long enough to master the land?

The absence of text-heavy cutscenes allows players to craft their own tale of perseverance. Each play session feels like a chapter in an epic struggle against the burrowing hordes—every narrowly-timed shot, every last-second power-up, and every close call with the generalissimo gopher weaves into your personal high-score saga.

Thematically, the game’s title hints at its looped design: what comes around goes around—both your walnut drops and your dwindling life bar. That subtle metaphor underscores the challenge of balance and the inevitability of cycles, elevating a simple arcade premise into something a bit more philosophical.

Overall Experience

What Comes Around excels as an addictive arcade-style experience that’s easy to pick up but hard to master. Its tight controls, rhythmic pacing, and inventive planetary mechanics keep you hooked wave after wave. Short runs are perfect for quick breaks, while the lure of beating your own high score can eat up hours.

While enemy variety is somewhat limited—primarily gophers and their generalissimo counterpart—the game compensates with escalating speed, precision timing challenges, and clever level design. The cyclical nature of the world adds layers of strategy unseen in typical single-screen shooters.

Ultimately, What Comes Around is a streamlined gem for players who appreciate focused gameplay, charming visuals, and a score-attack mindset. Its minimalist story and intuitive mechanics make it approachable, yet its subtle depth and escalating tension will keep seasoned arcade fans coming back for “just one more” run.

Retro Replay Score

null/10