Rosewater is a point-and-click adventure with a pretty good story and a decent length. Besides, there is value in at least one replay since the story changes based on your choices. The game is heavy on dialog. You mostly walk around the various scenes consisting of a handful of rooms, collect a few items and do a lot of talking to NPCs. If you have played some adventure games before the puzzles are hardly a challenge. Gameplay-wise, Rosewater is mostly about how you as the protagonist Harley Leger, interact with a group of five companions. A typical scenario is your companions disagreeing about something and you having to make a decision. Depending on who you agree with, some of your companions will form stronger bonds with you - which may well end up to be very consequential. The story takes you along a coach-trip from the town of Rosewater through wild, beautiful frontier country to the city of El Presidio. Along the way, a lot of small adventures await. Hence, Rosewater is in no way an Open-World game but rather a story of episodes in fixed order. The 1850 western setting in an alternate steampunk-ish history is quite interesting, although in some aspects if feels a bit half-baked. The latter goes for the overall visuals as well. While some scenes are very beautiful and atmospheric, others look bland and unfinished. But that is a minor problem compared to how the characters look: It is one thing that most characters look kind of boring. This can be considered realistic because - let's face it - average people did probably look boring in the 19ths century. Especially the female characters seem to have been designed along the principle of not having one iota of sex-appeal. This principle certainly deserves respect. But the lines, the colours, and the animations are simply bad. The amateurish character-design is balanced off positively by the good voice acting. All in all, Rosewater is a solid game. Die-hard fans of point-and-click adventures should play it.
This game is your standard retro point-and-click adventure with a typical but very well orchestrated story of psychological horror. Not surprisingly, the setting is a rural US community where something sinister and possibly supernatural is going on. Kathy, our protagonist, was a child here and returns for her grandfathers funeral. What was supposed to be a stay of a few hours turns into several days, during which Kathy finds out more about the past than she bargained for. The losses and tragedies of several families turn out to be interwoven. Strange natural (or supernatural?) phenomena and a man in a red suit are haunting the area. Most parts of the story are classics of the genre: troubled childhood, war-stories, suicide, the graveyard, the attic, the forest, the lake. Anyone who has watched films, read books, or played games for some years is bound to find a lot of familiar elements. But they are played out so well and combined with some original ideas - which turn the result into a really great adventure game. The graphics are nice if you like pixel art reminiscent of 1990s games.
I had "Thimbleweed Park" and "Dreams in the Witch House" down as the nerdiest games I've ever played until I played "Lucy Dreaming". Lucy, the protagonist, is about 12 years of age and a quite nerdy little girl. She speaks in a lovely British accent (not sure from what part of Britain exactly), has a dry sense of humour and owns a lot of toys reminiscent of "Ghostbusters", "Monkey Island" and the like. Lucy manoeuvres her way through her small home-town and her dreams trying to solve an old murder-case and to get rid of her nightmares. The way the story unfolds is orchestrated perfectly. The developers have put an enormous amount of thought and attention to detail into the quaint little world of "Lucy Dreaming". The vibe of a British village comes across very vividly and reminds of the "Midsomer Murders". The characters which Lucy meets are very funny and very believable at the same time. Their well-written conversations with Lucy create an intensity of immersion that hardly any other game can boast. The end of the game is a little bit sudden and underwhelming and also a little bit sad - but it is not terrible, no complete let-down. I only falls short of the utter perfection that game has delivered along the way. Anyone who likes British humour, British detective stores, 1990s style point-and-click adventures, or geeky references should absolutely play this game. You can event try to solve a Rubik's Cube INSIDE the game.
I have not finished this game yet but after playing for a few hours I like it very much. It is an unusual combination of point-and-click adventure and micro-management game. As earlier reviews have pointed out, at first the management of resources (sleep, food, health, warmth, sanity, several categories of knowledge, and time) is quite difficult. This is because not all ways to keep your character at the necessary levels is apparent immediately. My suggestion is to experiment a bit and then start a new game for a more enjoyable experience. Of course, some difficulty will remain - no fun without a little challenge. The struggle of a poor student in pre-computer times is simulated yery accurately: Should you study to do well on exams, do odd jobs because you are seriously short on money - or just get a good night of sleep? And, of course, it would not be a Lovecraftian game without the omnipresent, ever encroaching manifestations of Cosmic Horror putting a strain on the protagonist's sanity. If you like the literary tradition in the wake of Edgar Allan Poe and Howard P. Lovecraft and if you have spent time studying at a university, this game is definitely for you. I myself do a lot of creative work and studying of math and computer science in my free time. It is somewhat weird that after another evening-session of studying, writing, and coding, at my desk I turn to this game for relaxation - only to play a character who sits at a desk studying math and occult tomes. It hardly gets more nerdy than this.
