Rosewater, Western Vespuccia, 1850. Harley Leger, a writer, is heading out to the west, leaving New Bretagne behind her. She, like everyone else, is looking for a chance to make something of themselves, and for Harley, that opportunity comes in the form of a writing job at the Rosewater Post.
After arriving in the sleepy little town, Harley gets her first assignment. She's to write a story of Gentleman Jake, a touring gunslinger, who displays his prowess to the excited public. This meeting proves to be more than just a simple buff piece of an old hero past his prime, when Jake asks her to join his quest to find the hidden fortune of Doctor Clarke. He's an aethericity researcher, whose display went badly wrong at the Lamplight City expo, killing several people. After the incident, the doctor disappeared, but Jake is convinced that he has left behind a secret cache of money from his investors, unable or unwilling to get it back after aethericity research was outlawed.
Harley finds out that Clarke might have headed out to the city of El Presidio, so together with Jake, his companion Danny, a revolution fighter Phil and a herbalist Nadine, they embark on a wagon trip to the faraway coastal city. The middle part of the game offers some additional replay value in the form of randomized story vignettes, which offer different ways of bonding with your crewmates. And speaking of replay values, many of the puzzles have a couple of ways of solving them, which adds some rather rare garnishing for an adventure game.
In El Presidio, the trail gets hotter and the plot thicker. As it turns out, the story of Clarke's fortune might not have been quite true, but in the end, there's still money in finding the man. Not to mention a great story to write about. And Harley, determined to see the case to the end, pushes through, only to find seeds of a possible military coup.
Who you have with you in El Presidio depends on how you fared in the second act of the game. Some of your companions might even be dead by this point, so choices matter and deeds have consequences. This, naturally, also affects how you'll manage to find Clarke, as different companions bring different skills to the table.
Rosewater is one of the most ambitious traditional point-and-click games I've seen in ages. And for what it's doing, it manages to pull off magnificently. The game offers a rather rare treat in the genre in the form of allowing several different solutions to puzzles, as well as a feeling of genuine choices with an actual effect on how the story unfolds.
As for puzzles, Rosewater has more or less all the staples of the genre: dialogue puzzles, environment puzzles and inventory puzzles. None of the puzzles are what I'd call overly difficult for any seasoned fan of the genre, but even for novices, they come out as fair and all can be figured out without resorting to any form of moonlogic.
The gameplay is a modern, streamlined point-and-click affair, as you'd expect from any new entry to the genre. The smart cursor changes accordingly when hovering over a hotpot, and at times, you have two action choices, depending on whether the object has other interactions beyond looking at it. There's also a hotspot revealer, which should help, but which I forgot existed.
The art, animation, voice acting and music are all top notch as well. As an interesting choice, the animations are all rotoscoped, which adds to the style. The style reminds me of an older adventure game, The Last Express, a solid game on its own right, but which I've not, for some reason, reviewed. I do need to give a shout out to Maya Murphy, who voices Harley, as her performance feels like a nice bow a top of a nicely wrapped package.
Rosewater, with its alternative history timeline and intriguing story with interesting characters and game design, is a solid example of what can be done in the genre that once dominated home computers. It shows what passionate fans of the genre can do with tools like Adventure Game Studio at their disposal, and that does not mean simply tracing old tropes, but a genuine attempt to push the genre forward.
If you feel the game setting is familiar, then you are right, as it is set in the same alternative history setting as The Lamplight City. While The Lamplight City was a decent game, Rosewater improves from it quite a bit.
Rosewater is a game I'd recommend for all fans of the genre. It's also a game I can recommend for those who might be interested in the genre, but have not yet dared to plunge into it. You can get it from GOG and Steam. It's well worth the admission.
Comments
Post a Comment