• October 15, 2020 on Nintendo Switch Rediscover magic and chart your adventure through this forgotten northern world of mystery and monsters. Find your courage, discover hidden paths, solve ancient puzzles and travel deeper through the icy land to learn the truth.
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• October 15, 2020 on Nintendo Switch Rediscover magic and chart your adventure through this forgotten northern world of mystery and monsters. Find your courage, discover hidden paths, solve ancient puzzles and travel deeper through the icy land to learn the truth.

Every dark fairytale has its monster.

Roki Game

Röki (Switch) Review by Jordan Rudek

by Jordan Rudek - October 18, 2020, 11:52 pm EDT
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A charming but by-the-numbers adventure of puzzles, family, and mythical creatures.

Point-and-click style adventure games rely on their writing, their world, and the quality of their puzzles to really make an impression, and for the most part, Röki manages to succeed in these areas. Set in the Scandinavian wilderness, you play as Tove, a young girl who struggles to keep her family intact after the death of her mother. It’s obvious that she too struggles with this personal tragedy, and flashbacks and memories crop up throughout the game that call attention to her pain, but also her courage and resolve. When her brother Lars is abducted by an immense and menacing creature, Trove sets out to rescue him, and the set up ends up being quite compelling. How does the rest of the adventure fare?

The snowy natural environment of Röki makes for an endearing backdrop for Tove’s quest. Along the way she encounters a talking tree and its roots that serve as waypoints, stone trolls that are at first aloof but eventually warm up to you, and a giant cat from whom you need to steal a roasted ham. The world itself isn’t made up of too many screens, but the art style does a good job of creating locations that feel distinct, even with a somewhat muted color palette. The way the camera zooms way out can make it difficult to see Tove and objects with which you can interact, but this technique also creates a memorable sense of scale. Indeed, Tove’s interactions with mythical beasts great and small are all the more magical because of the game’s use of perspective.

As one might expect from a puzzle-adventure title, gameplay consists primarily of walking from place to place, interacting with characters, collecting objects, and using those objects to progress. On the whole, the puzzles are quite fair and logical, and it’s not likely that a player would be stuck for very long before figuring out the way forward. An early example involves rigging a bear trap with a rope to pull a sword out of a golem’s back. By dragging one item onto another in your inventory, you can combine them, which is required at a few points, but mostly you’ll be taking single items from your inventory and dragging them to spots or characters with which you can interact with. One handy feature is that you can click the left stick in to highlight anything on the screen that is interactable, but the slight flash provided can be hard to see with smaller objects. Use of color or a more pronounced highlight would help.

A helpful journal allows Tove to view a map, notes on each area she has visited (and the characters within), collectables she has picked up, and achievement-like badges she has earned. The main issue with the journal is that navigating the different pages within the notes section is slow and cumbersome, always starting back at page one. Still, it’s nice to be able to see the different requests and details of each place she has visited so that you can keep things straight after amassing 10 or more items.

Tove’s rescue mission lasts anywhere from 6-10 hours depending on your pace, and even though a neat mechanic is introduced during the final third of the game, it’s entirely possible to feel that the gameplay has overstayed its welcome. This feeling arises mainly from the way in which some of the later puzzles simply require you to shuttle back and forth rather than make any particular satisfying deductions. While the story beats are stronger and more impactful later in the game, the minute-to-minute action doesn’t rise to meet them.

There is a lot to like about Röki, and I found myself fairly engrossed during its first half. The story of an outcast god trying to turn her son from a monster into a human using Lars as a sacrifice is an effective one; you can genuinely feel Tove’s despair and resolve pushing and pulling at each other during the playthrough. Repetition and overly simple puzzles outweigh the final third’s gameplay trick, but all in all fans of adventure titles are likely to find Tove’s story of loss, hardship, and courage endearing. Completionists have dozens of collectables to find and badges to unlock, and the subtle background music evokes the feeling of traipsing through a wintery forest. Even though some of the character designs are a little off-putting, the overall art style is quite attractive. Despite not really bringing anything new to the table, Röki provides a solid puzzle-adventure experience that only drags a little towards the end.

Summary

Pros

• Accessible gameplay
• Collectables and achievements
• Endearing characters and story
• Fair puzzle design

Cons

• Certain character designs look weird
• Overstays its welcome by the final act
• Some overly simple filler puzzles in the second half

Talkback

Worldwide Releases

Treasure Tove

Scandinavia — anyone who’s been there will tell you it’s a magical place. Wild and untamed, it’s a region steeped in history and mythology. A place where the two intertwine. A place where nature comes alive and feels tangible. This is Röki’s setting, and the backdrop against which the game’s heavy narrative plays out. There isn’t much in the way of action here, but if you’ve read this far and think it sounds good, then you’re in for a treat.

The story centres around a single family: daughter Tove, son Lars, and their mother and father. For most of your time with Röki, which will take around ten hours, you control Tove, but later you gain the ability to swap to another character, too. It starts normally enough, with Tove and Lars playing out in the snow, but they soon get themselves into trouble and Lars goes missing. As Tove, you take off into the woods, hot on his trail. And so begins your encounters with all kinds of weird and wonderful “monsters” in an attempt to get him back.

See, Röki was described to me as a “non-violent” adventure by one of its creators, Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou, back at EGX 2019, and it’s a point that comprises the central theme of the game: what is a monster, and why are we, as a society, always trying to harm things that we don’t understand? In one instance, Tove meets a female troll named Trollhilde under a bridge. She’s been stuck with a sword and tells Tove that it’s just the way humans behave. You, of course, help remove the sword and befriend Trollhilde. She goes on to tell you that she stopped using human bones for soup a long time ago, too, which is helpful. All of Röki’s cast of characters have nuances like this, and you will be rubbing shoulders with all kinds of magical and mythical beings.

Social commentary rings throughout the whole game; it’s done well, and forces the player to confront their preconceived notions in a way that is subtle and doesn’t detract from the experience. And like the works of Stephen King, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, it calls into question what makes something a monster. Funnily enough, none of the so-called monsters are mean, and we see this play out with another troll. It has a frog-thing captive, and when it finally gets free, the troll, instead of being angry, comments that he undid the frog-thing’s chains a long time ago, and that he is glad it left. Which brings us to the core tenets of Röki: love and kindness. As Tove follows the trail of her brother, she helps and gets help in return. Removing the sword from Trollhilde, for example.

Roekie

Let’s talk puzzles. This game is full of them, and they’re good. It requires you to combine items in your inventory then use them on objects and characters most of the time, but there are also environmental puzzles which require you to solve riddles and place blocks with symbols in the right order and decipher things. In adventures, this is usually where things start to get frustrating, with illogical puzzles ruining the experience. This wasn’t the case even once with Röki — every puzzle manages to be new and interesting. Removing the sword from Trollhilde requires you to combine a rope and a bear trap; both objects are logically linked to the situation, and there is the added commentary of using something which is meant to harm — the bear trap — for good. The puzzles manage to fit so perfectly and are some of the best you will play in the genre.

The controls are great — if you play with a controller. Y on an Xbox pad will show your inventory at the top of the screen, and holding A on an item will allow you to drag it, with the thumbstick, onto the world for interaction. Holding B lets you sprint, and X allows you to read Tove’s journal, which contains up-to-date information on the world and its events. Mouse and keyboard play, however, is not recommended. WASD to move feels off, and when you open your inventory, you have to use the mouse to scroll left and right through your items. It’s not a good feeling. That said, use a controller and it’s one of the most innovative adventure game control systems available, and one which all adventure game developers should be utilising from here on.

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‍Röki is split into three chapters. As you broach its second chapter, the whole world opens up to you, and it’s somewhat open-world in design. There are many locations, and you unlock fast travel to move quickly between them. It’s also at this point that you have to enlist the help of three “guardians” to progress Röki’s story. This is Röki’s weakest area — you’ve unlocked the whole world to explore, but you must backtrack and solve puzzles, which feels like it goes on a bit too long. And by the time you’ve finished helping all three guardians, you are more than ready to move on. Luckily, the third and final chapter is the most interesting of all three. The puzzles get more intricate, you get to explore new areas, and the story gets even more engrossing.

Navigating Röki’s world comes with its own frustrations. There is a map in Tove’s journal showing you places you’ve been, and a page with updates on what has happened there, but nowhere does it easily tell you your objectives. If you take some time away from Röki, coming back can be confusing. You open the journal and flick through the pages, unsure of what you were trying to track down and for whom. Then there is the issue of remembering where to go and how to get there. Yes, there is fast travel, but the locations only have a symbol representing their destination, not a name. This can also lead to frustration as you try to associate where you want to go with what that squiggly thing means. It doesn’t ruin the experience, but it’s something that feels overlooked.

Roekillik

Röki’s art is beautifully stunning. Perhaps the best I’ve ever seen in an adventure game. The stark, bright-white landscape allows objects and characters to stick out in an eye-catching way, like Tove’s red hat. The animation is likewise brilliant, too, with movements and physics remaining smooth. Combine these aspects with the satisfying sound design — the Sims-like noises of characters, the crinkle of ice and snow underfoot — and it’s an immersive experience. If you love winter, you will adore Röki.

Roekiah

‍Röki’s world comes alive in such a way that there’s hardly anything to fault. Sure, there are niggles with navigation, but when the world is otherwise so interesting and full of life, it’s a small price to pay. The heart-warming story is captivating and makes you think, the characters are interesting and subvert your expectations, and the puzzles are some of the best-designed on the market. Every moment with Röki feels like a wintery, magical treat, and its kind values make it a lovely, safe place to be snuggled up.