Developer: Kobold games
Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
Platform: PC
Journey of a Roach – Review
Journey of a roach, a new cute looking point and click adventure game coming from the experienced publisher Deadalic and the brand new Kobold games. A lot of trust was placed from Daedalic upon the smaller studio. Let’s see if it was trust well earned.
Story
Journey of a Roach tells the story of two roaches living in a post-apocalyptic world where everything was destroyed and turned into a desolate wasteland. One day one of the two roaches finds a beautiful flower in this wasteland. He then decides to get his friend but when they try to go back to the flower, things start to go horribly wrong. This is where the story of journey of a roach begins. Most of the story is told through pretty nicely drawn comic panels. The main characters don’t have a voice and thus talk in a sort of “gibberish language”. Despite this the developers managed to instill a lot of character and personality into both of them.
One sad point about the story is that the game tries too hard to be funny. It uses a lot of obvious or easy jokes and on top of that somewhat points them out to you when they are made. Humor in games is a tricky matter and though the attempt should be applauded, the execution just wasn’t right at certain times.
Graphics
Graphically the game is a bit of a mixed bag. The drawn cutscenes look really nice and detailed and you can tell a lot of time went into the look and design. The game however isn’t as nice as the cutscenes. It’s not that the game looks bad, technically it’s perfectly fine, It’s just that the 3D style the game uses feels very unfitting and looks a bit underwhelming in comparison to the cutscenes. It just feels like they took the 3D look a bit too far. Truth be told it’s very understandable why they went with it, considering how the game plays, but the contrast with the drawn style and how detailed it is just kept bringing up that little voice saying “ if only the entire game looked like this.”
Sound
When it comes to sound, Journey of a Roach can be described in three words: Good but limited. The game has some great music in it and for each new area there’s a new track to go along with it. Exactly one piece, which it loops over and over and over again. The tracks are just fine, but if you ever get stuck on a certain puzzle, just prepare to be hearing it more than once.
Gameplay
Point and click adventure games are one of the oldest genres in video gaming history, so it’s pretty hard to do anything amazingly new. The answer to that problem? Do what you do very well, which is exactly what journey of a roach does. The game controls really well, whether you’re using the mouse and keyboard, or a controller to play the game. Walking on walls can get a little bit clunky at times but never really bad or annoying.
Every object you can interact with is very clearly marked as soon as you walk near it, making it a lot easier to find out what the game wants you to do. You’ll run into times where you just have to take a step back and think for a bit, but eventually you can find the solution to the puzzles without the answer ever feeling absurd or cheap. The game also tries to help you along by thought bubbles with hints drawn in them for times where you actually do get stuck. This gives the game a really nice and pleasant pace. There is one downside to all of this however and that’s that the game is pretty short. If you’re really good at these types of games surely your first playthrough can be done in under two hours. There’s even an achievement for beating the game in under 18 minutes. Now there’s nothing wrong with short games at all, but Journey of a Roach just feels a bit light on content considering its fairly moderate price. In the end you’ll have to decide what you want to pay for around two hours of entertainment.
Conclusion
Journey of a Roach is a game that tries very hard and shows it does, it just falls a bit short in the end. You can tell there’s hard work and good intentions behind it, it’s just too bad the end result doesn’t always show that off in the best way. It’s a game worth playing, but maybe wait until it’s on sale.
No Comments