Helix Corp · Specimen transit area · Keep out

Peril & Pride

The most unhinged hero on your phone.

Rory Leo Vane was a wildlife geneticist — until he said no to his boss and got thrown into the splice chamber for it. Now he's half lion, all mane, loose on an island of caged animals, corporate machinery and one very smug villain. Run it. Jump it. Claw-spin it. Roar.

Coming soon

iPhoneAndroidPC

Watch the teaser Get launch news
Rory, the lion hero: enormous amber mane, red t-shirt, torn lab coat, leaping straight at you with a huge fanged grin

The set-up

One splice. One island. One very big head.

ROAR-E is a corridor-3D platformer in the classic mascot-platformer grammar — built for phones first, with a hand-painted look that moves like the key art. Saturday-morning cartoon, with teeth.

A glowing splice chamber in Dr. Rook's laboratory, a silhouette standing inside it

A scientist says no.

Rory sabotages his employer's illegal gene-splicing program. His employer is Dr. Cassius Rook. Rook has a chamber.

Rory mid-leap, mouth open, enormous mane, torn lab coat flying

The chamber says yes.

He wakes up as Specimen V: half lion, enormous head, red t-shirt, torn lab coat, zero dignity. Rook only ever calls him by the number.

A wooden slat cage on a beach between beached cargo ships, next to a rusted 'Specimen transit area — keep out' warning sign

The island is a lab. Break it.

Five worlds of caged animals and corporate machinery. Every cage you smash adds a resident to your camp. Every boss you beat frees the hybrid they were built from.

Five worlds

Five worlds. One maniac.

Each world is a place Rook has colonised: a facility grafted onto an ecosystem. Five platforming levels, rides and arenas, then a lieutenant who chose the wrong side.

  • W1
    Rory sprinting along a white-sand beach past rusted, beached cargo ships and cranes

    The Shorewrecks

    Beached coast facility

    Beached cargo ships, cranes, tide pools. Rust-red containers on white sand, teal corporate signage, bright noon light.

    Boss — Scuttle, a coconut-crab foreman with one enormous claw and a clipboard.

  • W2
    Rory and Kip running along a giant branch inside a glowing jungle greenhouse

    The Canopy

    Jungle greenhouse belt

    Kapok trunks, canopy platforms, glowing greenhouse domes. Bioluminescent lab-glow under volumetric god rays.

    Boss — Morosa, the sloth warden on a hanging vine throne.

  • W3
    A dust devil tearing across dark scrap flats under a sunset sky

    The Scrablands

    Arid scrap flats

    Termite towers, scrap ramps, dust-devil trails. Golden grass, red earth, heat shimmer, scrap-metal glamour.

    Boss — Gnash. Two hyena heads, one body, zero agreement.

  • W4

    Redactedby order of facility management

    The Reefworks

    Undersea glass complex

    Glass tunnels through reef, turbine halls, kelp. Sodium-orange lamps in teal depths. Footage withheld — World 4 ends in a blackout.

    Boss — Volt, the electric-eel director. Waterproof tie.

  • W5
    Dr. Rook standing on an obsidian balcony high above the island, raven on his shoulder, storm clouds behind

    The Spire

    Volcanic ridge and Rook's tower

    Obsidian ridges, lava falls, the white spire interior. Magma rim light on sterile lab panels.

    Final — Rook. And the cure. And a choice.

How it plays

Smash. Free. Roar. Repeat.

One stick, two buttons, five verbs. The jump is the product: coyote time, input buffering and ledge forgiveness are tuned so a phone feels like a controller — and Bluetooth controllers work from day one.

  • Run
  • Jump
  • Claw Spin
  • Pounce Slam
  • Slide
  • ROAR — when Kip's meter is full
A colossal hermit crab wearing a shipwreck as a shell chases Rory across the water Free tier

Rampage Runs

Something enormous is behind you and the camera is in front. Run toward the screen. Don't look back. (Look back.)

Rory holding a blazing ember orb while sprinting through the jungle with Kip on his shoulder

Ember Rush

Timed arenas. Grab every ember before the clock does. Medal ladders on every one.

Rory in a golden claw-spin tornado facing a crab foreman in a hard hat

Boss fights

Five lieutenants who chose Rook. Comedic, not menacing — until phase two.

Platforming levels

Twenty-five corridor levels, five per world. Cages, crates, hidden branches, and one Cub hidden in every level.

Pride Rides

Animal-back autorunners. Bastion Roll: a pangolin, a hill, and a very bad idea.

Bonus rounds

Side-camera crate-and-cage gauntlets tucked off hidden branches. Old school on purpose.

Full Pride

Mirror Trials

Hard remixes of levels you've already beaten, against the clock. Built for the fifteen percent.

Daily Ember Run

One seeded daily challenge. Exactly one, so it never becomes a chore list.

Dev window

Early pre-alpha capture, September 2026.

Straight from the engine, no polish: greybox floors dressed with the finished cages, checkpoints and the clamper enemy. Rory's animation rig isn't wired up yet, so he T-poses through the whole thing with total confidence. The jump, the bounce cages and the one-time TEACH glyphs are real.

Pre-alpha · World 1 · Sep 2026

ROAR-E key art: Rory mid-leap with Nyra, Kip and Dr. Rook behind him

Muted, loops, 21 seconds. Everything is still being painted.

Greybox World 1 level: Rory on a sand-coloured corridor with floating orbs and wooden cages ahead

W1-1 “First Light” — greybox corridor, real cages, real orbs.

Rory in mid-air above a red platform, a teal bounce ring on a crate ahead and a BOUNCE glyph on screen

TEACH beat: one fading glyph the first time, then never again.

Rory landing on a stacked crate wrapped in a teal bounce ring, on a floating platform

Teal means safe. Amber means timed. Magenta means don't. One colour, one meaning, everywhere.

The camp is the home screen. No start-screen ritual: boot drops you straight into your camp, a small explorable space that physically grows with every rescue. Pearl's Workshop sells cosmetics — visible item, visible price — and every look previews live on your Rory.

Teaser

See it move.

Cinematic teaser · pre-rendered, not gameplay · 1 min 05 · sound on

Specimen files

Meet the specimens. And the management.

Named characters carry adult-friendly attitude. Only the Cubs are allowed to be cute, and they know it.

  • Specimen V
    Rory: a lion-headed hero with an exploded amber mane, red t-shirt, torn white lab coat and cargo shorts, leaping with a huge fanged grin

    Rory Leo Vane

    The hero · half lion · all mane

    Wildlife geneticist. Sabotaged his boss's illegal splice program and got thrown into the chamber for it. Woke up with an enormous head and a cracked ID badge. Runs, jumps, claw-spins, pounce-slams, slides, and — when the meter is full — roars.

    “Smash. Free. Roar. Repeat.”

  • Not a specimen
    Kip: a wiry pygmy possum with big notched ears and heavy-lidded amber eyes, arms crossed, leaning on a rusty wheel

    Kip

    The Judge · ordinary possum

    Non-hybrid, non-speaking, deeply unimpressed. Judged Rory worth following anyway. Rides on his mane, twitches an ear whenever a secret is nearby, and doubles as the roar meter.

    “His sidekick? Zero percent impressed.”

  • Specimen I
    Nyra: a lioness adventurer with goggles pushed up on her forehead, a scar across one eye, a scarf, one armoured shoulder and a tool belt

    Nyra

    The one that got away

    A lioness uplifted by Rook's very first splice, years before Rory. Glimpsed, then feared, then fought beside. She did not wait to be rescued, and she is not about to start.

    “She is cooler than him. And he knows it.”

  • The management
    Dr. Cassius Rook: a tall, gaunt man in an immaculate white three-piece suit with DNA-helix embroidery, silver hair, black gloves, a helix-topped cane and a raven on his shoulder

    Dr. Cassius Rook

    The villain · fully human, proud of it

    Rory's ex-partner. Gene-splicer, raven owner, cane enthusiast. The only clean, symmetrical, uncreased thing on the island, and he would like to keep it that way. Speaks mostly through the facility PA.

    “The rest of the island is above your pay grade, Specimen V.”

The Pride

Your camp fills up as you free them. Each one staffs a corner of your home screen.

  • Mira harness-maker and quartermaster, fennec ears, welding goggles
  • Pearl runs the Workshop; four arms, two of them crossed
  • Jett runs the Sprint course and narrates himself
  • Bastion the rolling ride; pangolin, spectacles, knitted scarf
  • Oran the sage, with a staff of lab-pipe and driftwood
  • The Cubs one hidden per level, freed into the den — the only ones allowed to be cute

Our promise to players

Defensible in a one-star review.

Trust is the moat. Every design and commercial decision in ROAR-E has to survive that test — so here is the contract, in writing, before the game ships.

  • No energy systems.
  • No wait timers.
  • No pay-to-win.
  • No loot boxes.
  • No gacha.
  • No interstitial ads.
  • No ads at all for paying players.
  • No difficulty tuned to sell anything.
  • No purchase influencing any leaderboard.
  • No dark-pattern popups.
  • Assist mode is free, unlimited, and unjudged.
Step one · free

Worlds 1 and 2. All of them.

Ten platforming levels, two Rampage Runs, Bastion Roll rides, the first Ember Rush arena, bonus rounds, the camp, the Daily Ember Run and every Cub in Worlds 1–2. Roughly two and a half to three hours of real game.

  • No gates, no timers, no nags.
  • The free tier is the demo. The demo is the marketing.
Step two · one-time unlock

The Full Pride.

Worlds 3–5, every remaining ride and arena, Mirror Trials, both endings, the post-game relic hunt. Bought once, yours forever, with a restore-purchases button up front where you can see it.

  • Never discounted to nothing. Price integrity is part of trust.
  • Offered once, in-fiction. Then it lives quietly on the map.

Cosmetics in Pearl's Workshop are direct purchases — visible item, visible price, nothing random — and every season's earnable set is as good as the paid one. In the free tier only, you may be offered a strictly opt-in rewarded ad (a retry token, an ember doubler): capped per day, never an interstitial, never a banner, and gone entirely once you unlock.

ROAR-E: Peril & Pride key art poster — Rory leaping toward the viewer with Nyra, Kip and Dr. Rook behind him on the island

The studio

An Australian indie studio with one very loud lion.

ALPHA 444 IP Pty Ltd is an independent games studio based in Australia. ROAR-E is our first title.

It is a corridor-3D platformer built in Godot 4 with a hand-painted look, tuned for phones first and controllers always. We are a small team. We ship when it's good, and we would rather earn a five-star review than trick a one-star into paying.

  • StudioALPHA 444 IP Pty Ltd
  • ACN686 955 028
  • Based inAustralia
  • EngineGodot 4
hello@roare.app

Press, partnerships and platform enquiries: same address, subject line “Press”. Player support & FAQ →