Nobody really likes roaches, do they? They’re pretty gross looking, in spite of everything, and that they serve no real purpose rather then to wake you up by skittering along the wood floor of your bedroom in the course of the night. Yet science means that these nasty creatures would outlast humans in a nuclear apocalypse, that’s the foundation for Journey of a Roach, a degree-and-click adventure game that does the impossible: it makes roaches likable.
Perhaps much more impressive is that it does so with none dialogue. Journey of a Roach tells the tale of 2 roaches: Jim and his clumsy buddy, Bud. Once you have a glimpse of a flower growing within the barren wasteland of what seems to be a postapocalyptic Earth, Bud tries to lead Jim to the pretty plant, only to fall deep underground where all types of mutated bugs live. For your journey to rescue him, you find a global filled with interesting and sundry characters, all brimming with plot and personality despite never speaking a word. It’s as though Pixar’s A Bug’s Life merged with the animated movie 9.
Are you able to believe there’s an empty table at this place?
As a roach, considered one of your biggest advantages is the power to crawl up walls and across ceilings, that is immediately neat and useful. You are able to move freely across the environment with the keyboard or analog stick, and climbing walls makes traversal easy. There are occasional issues with movement, reminiscent of should you may not be ready to climb onto something that needs to be no real obstacle for a roach, or moments when the camera rotation is disorienting if you are climbing on ceilings (particularly in a single section with air vents you could crawl through), but for probably the most part, getting around is just not an issue.
Though they never speak a word, the characters are wonderfully diverse.
Since Journey of a Roach has no dialogue and is not heavy on story, nearly all of the experience comes right down to solving puzzles. Here is where the game’s point-and-click inspirations are clearest; most puzzles boil all the way down to the tried-and-true “find item in a single area, use item elsewhere” mechanics. That said, Journey of a Roach seems to have learned some lessons from both successful and failed adventure games of latest years, and most puzzle solutions do make logical sense (rather than requiring seemingly random item combinations that result in more guesswork than brainpower, like many adventures of old).
Even in case you get stuck, you may often get a subtle hint by hovering the cursor over a particular object, which might alleviate a few of the frustration of not knowing what a list item could be used for. There are some moments while you may need to resort to trial and blunder (one puzzle principally I solved completely by chance, and i am unsure i’d have discovered the answer alone), but generally, this hint system works well to notify you of exactly what try to be doing.
Hint bubbles help keep your goals clear in the course of the journey.
There can also be a handy feature that permits you to zoom out slightly and highlight “hot spots” (the objects within the environment you’ll interact with), that could mean you can locate a number of the harder-to-find items. The small arrows it uses to show objects of interest, however, aren’t always enough help. It’s still possible that you’re going to spend more time than you want beating your head against a puzzle only to find which you missed the mandatory item hidden within the corner of an adjacent room. During this sense, Journey of a Roach falls into the identical styles of traps many adventure games fall into, which you may either find nostalgic or frustrating, looking on your history with the genre.
Though the adventure itself is charming, it is the puzzles that keep you pushing forward. Not one of the puzzles are especially demanding, and you may finish the sport in one two- to 3-hour sitting, which seems like the appropriate length once the credits start rolling. Whenever you know the complete solutions to the puzzles, however, the sport can easily be completed in under half an hour (in actual fact, a Steam achievement awards you for finishing it in under 18 minutes). This isn’t a game for which you may wish to depend on a walkthrough, since it can be over far too quickly.
Journey of a Roach is a captivating, worthwhile adventure with some clever puzzles and a pleasant cast of characters, though you’re able to wish for an extended adventure for the fee. It makes many of the same mistakes as its ancestors, nonetheless it makes up for many of them with clever design and a special world. If all roaches were this enjoyable to be around, maybe i would not mind knowing they’ll outlive humanity.