Roger, Roger
Picture the scene: you’re a young girl, waking up in the morning with a sense of unease. You enter the living room, expecting to find your father. Instead, a complete stranger is asleep on your sofa. Upon waking, he won’t let you leave and stops you from using the phone. A pretty good story hook, eh? Even the title “and Roger” is off-kilter and alluring. Who doesn’t love a mystery?
Discussing the story of and Roger is much easier than trying to describe the gameplay. Anyone who has played the mobile game Florence can use that as a sort of reference. Context-based puzzles such as holding a conversation by tracing a line, sorting objects by size or using different button cues to get the order of brushing your teeth correctly are just a small sample of the interactive elements here. This is a game that brags about being beaten in one hour or less, so there’s nothing too complex here. This is by no means a detriment – for the experience the developers intended, then pacing is paramount.
Broken into a three-act structure, the game begins as a horror experience before starting to morph into a more emotional, relatable one. As the game is such a short one, far be it for us to spoil anything here, but the storytelling is very effective, a refreshingly confident narrative voice. Once the meaning of the game becomes clear, all of these creative decisions become increasingly commendable.
House of Mouse
One major flaw with the console version of this title is that this was clearly designed for mouse controls, the analogue stick being a poor substitute. It’s a huge miss to not include touch screen controls on the Switch let alone take advantage of the Switch 2’s mouse options. Given how quick the game is to beat it won’t be a pain in the neck for long. It is a strange fumble given the slickness of the rest of the presentation. There’s also some very direct Christian messenging here. While there’s nothing that should alienate those of different religious persuasions, it’s always best to know what you’re getting into.
And Roger is a truly unique little title, perfectly using its limited systems to make an impact in an incredibly short amount of time. With simple but gorgeous art and really fantastic music and audio design, it’s an easy recommendation for anyone interested in video game storytelling. Warning, though: the subject matter is fairly dark, tackling an issue that affects countless families. Despite the lovely cartoon art style, it doesn’t get more mature than this.
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