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The RPS Advent Calendar 2020, December 11thThere’s magic in the air
There’s magic in the air
This is the RPS Advent Calendar, in which we reveal one of our favourite PC games of 2020 on each day. Headback to the calendarto open another door.
It’sRöki!
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Katharine:Rökiis the gentle point and click adventure we needed in 2020. It’s a tale of lost children, lost parents and finding your way through the mist and murk to come out stronger on the other side. The obstacles you face in its wintry, picture book landscape may look and feel epic in scale, with parasitic gods bearing down on you from on high and fierce trolls and sprites looming in the shadows, but the solution is always tucked away in your little red knapsack. Whether it’s slotting ancient stone tablets into place, or simply mixing a vat of sticky liquid to act as a temporary hair dye for an ageing, greying cat, Röki’s puzzles are delightfully grounded in the everyday, making the seemingly impossible task of rescuing young Tove’s little brother Lars from a spiteful demon queen feel that bit more attainable.
Beyond its generous set of puzzles, though, Röki is an ode to childhood and the myths and fairy tales that shape our imagination and urge us to believe in something bigger. It’s a magical game in every sense of the word, at once warm, cosy and charming with its bright, fantastical setting, and deeply tender-hearted as we discover the lingering trauma Tove’s been trying to overcome since she was a young girl.
But Röki doesn’t let up. The memories in that treehouse you’ve just grown with your sapling, can and fertiliser combo are all jumbled up. As is often the case with our fickle minds, events have shifted and morphed in the act of remembering them, and the only way Tove can set them right is to effectively tidy them up, rearranging key items within each scene so the memories can play out correctly. It’s the perfect mirror of what she did for Lars' toys at the beginning of the game, only now you begin to realise there’s something else being suppressed and overlooked here, too, twisted beyond all recognition as Tove fights to keep the memory at bay. It’s not difficult to guess what that secret is, but that’s precisely what makes Röki so quietly devastating. You may have cured the gods of their dark, magical curse, but Tove must deal with her own kind of emotional leech before her journey comes to an end.
It’s one of the many great parallels going on in Röki’s coming of age story, but what really elevates it above its peers is how everything’s filtered through the lens of its exquisite point and click puzzling. Lesser games might have dumped these memory sections in a cutscene, but Röki brings every moment back to the root of its genre, showing but never telling. It’s a truly wonderful game that deserves every inch of praise it’s received over the last five months since its release, and one that should definitely take pride of place in everyone’s Steam library. If a game can make me shed real human tears at a virtual sack of manure in this, the year 2020, that is a feat well worth celebrating.
