Game Review - Roki

Game Review: Röki by Polygon Treehouse
Score: +2/-2

"Röki is a stunning adventure set in the snowcapped wilderness. As Tove, you must explore an uncharted world of hidden legends and forgotten monsters."

Roki is a puzzle game of the older point-and-click style where you move a character to a scene location to interact with things. There are basically two parts to the story: A fairytale, and the protagonist's poignant personal history that is revealed during dream sequences that occur as part of her adventures.

There's about 12 hours of gameplay here, more if you replay to try for all achievements ("badges") and collectibles. Considering I got it at a 90% discount during the Epic Games Store 2023 Christmas season sale, price for gameplay was okay.

The two stories are decent but ultimately nothing to write home about.

• +1 That said, there are a few tense moments where the protagonist is in danger, at least in the first half of the game. For a game that doesn't have combat or failure, the scene direction was really quite good.
• Overall I felt that both stories were ultimately rather unsatisfying.
• The fairy tale story elements felt like they were lacking a sense of delight or achievement when you solved them.
• The protagonist's personal story felt like it could have been more poignant and emotional. The revelations that they presented all hinged on the character having incorrectly remembered key events, and that weakened the impact by relying on "surprise" that is made possible by deliberately deceiving the player.

Really boring second half.

• +1 The trailers tend to show the first part, where it's fantastic locations and curious Scandinavian mythology that doesn't often show up in video games. All that's pretty interesting to explore during play.
• -1 Then just when you think you're about to confront the boss and finish up the story, you enter a second half of tedious castle exploration without any fairytale elements, unlike the first half. It's basically boring.
• The point of this appears to be reading scattered journals that a previous expedition, but even then they appear entirely optional so if you are impatient to get this boring chapter over with you may well miss it.

-1 Good use of the control style at the last dream sequence, but otherwise it really just gets in the way.

• You end up holding movement keys through your several hours of gameplay.
• You also end up holding the key for sprinting because there's never a reason not go.
• It just prolongs the game and makes your fingers sore.

Rather easy puzzles.

• If you like puzzle games this one is easy enough to be considered story-focused so you can at least have the satisfaction of not needing to look up an internet walkthrough.
• That said, it is generally hard to make any puzzle game as you have to gauge based on your privileged position as puzzle designer whether they are sufficiently intuitive, or so bizarre that most player will end up "solving" them through systematically trying everything in their inventory without meaning.