Riley & Rochelle

Tl;dr: R&R makes a lot of mistakes, but it's cheap (on Steam) and the mistakes are interesting enough from a design prospective that I can still recommend it for academic purposes. In a sea of detective games, R&R stands out from the pack in two ways. Firstly, R&R isn't about a murder. A welcome change, to be sure! Secondly, it abandons established design norms left and right. Traveling off the beaten path can give your game a unique identity. Operative word: "can". It is generally advisable to put everything you need to solve your game's puzzles in the game. If you need anything that isn't general information, it should be in a virtual encyclopedia in-game. If you need to do math, give your players a calculator; if they need it they have it, if they don't need it they just won't use it. R&R throws this out the window. In order to solve puzzles, you need online resources. This seems harmless at first glance, but in its eagerness to integrate the world of R&R with ours it assumes that (1990's) pop culture is general knowledge. It isn't, leading to plenty of scenarios where I was left asking "Is this something I'm supposed to already know?" So I look up general knowledge, and I learn something. That's a good thing, right? Nope! The main reason to play a detective game is to feel clever. Asking a stupid question serves the exact opposite purpose. But at least that makes the online scavenger hunt aspect stronger, right? Not really. You only need two websites: Wikipedia for general info and TimeAndDate for calendars. There is exactly one time you need to follow an off-site Wikipedia link to learn the specific date of an event. It isn't a satisfying scavenger hunt if everything you need is in one big pile. Another mistake: the developers expect you to immerse yourself in the world of R&R by listening to the in-game music while you play. Maybe this is just me, but I have a hard time concentrating on large amounts of information while also paying attention to the lyrics of the music I'm listening to. It's simply too much and as a result, I played the entire game with nothing but city_ambiance_quiet.mp3 keeping me company. It's also rough that so much information is delivered via audio files. The voice acting is usually pretty good, but it slows the experience down. There are transcripts, but not only does the game actively discourage using them, they don't work correctly half the time. But at least the puzzles are good, right? Well, no. Many puzzles require unfair assumptions or bruteforcing, made worse by the fact that the game will sometimes fail to recognize that you entered a correct solution. The puzzles that do give enough information tend to deliver their solutions very unnaturally and hamfistedly. "It sucks that I have deal with this interpersonal drama with my bandmate on the first Wednesday after Canadian Thanksgiving in the year Windows 3.1 came out." It's super obvious the developers committed to players giving dates to prove they solved the game's mysteries and by the time they realized that was a mistake it was too late to go back. I did not enjoy my time with R&R, but I can't tell if that's because of who I am or if the game is genuinely on the bad side of "meh". But it's only 99 cents.

The gameplay was fun, but the characters just weren't likable and I didn't feel invested in their story

I wanted to like this game, being a big fan of Obra Dinn, Roottrees are Dead, and the rest of the genre. And it does some things well. But my gosh, it's a slog to get through. It wasn't particularly challenging, so answers felt contrived ("it is now Monday, oh how sad it is to be on the 1st of the month!"). All of the main documents felt the same, very expository, similar design style, bit of a bore to go through. The audio clips were so slow it was painful. The fact you couldn't turn off the incessant clicking/bumping when hovering over an item or clicking a button, especially when music was playing, was extremely frustrating. Story was interesting but nothing special.

Tim Sheinman, creator of this game, this message is for you. Are you OK? I've been trying to figure out why this and your other incredible, atmospheric deduction puzzlers are only $0.99 (and some are even FREE on itch.io). The only thing that makes sense is you must have an abysmally low sense of self-worth. Why else would you practically give away 4-6 hours of memorable, concentrated joy? I mean, beyond the excellent puzzle design, there's heartfelt writing, professional voice acting, beautiful art, and captivating original music. How on earth do you think that's only worth $0.99, less than a tiny packet of stale peanuts from a vending machine? Peanuts KILL innocent people. Peanuts LIE about being nuts. Why do you think your amazing work is worth less than a handful of lying, murderous legumes? Get into therapy man. I hope you get the help you clearly need and then raise your prices to AT LEAST $1 per hour of blissful entertainment you provide.

I don't think I've disliked anything at all about this project. It's filled with so much love and passion through and through. Vulnerability and sincerity and rawness that I think I'm missing from stories that I find lately. The investigation process also isn't too easy or too difficult, because all of the clues are there if you just know how to look and if you just read or listen to the right places. The sound design and the music especially are just wonderful. Everything about this piece of art feels so immersive and painstakingly crafted into such an experience of a narrative.

Return of the Obra DinnフォロワーのMind Diver / マインドダイバーの中でリスペクトする作品として紹介されていたものの1つ。 関連する情報から日記の日付を特定するゲーム。 XUnity.AutoTranslator-ReiPatcherで2019のフォントを指定したら日本語化出来た。 音声ファイルは設定で字幕表示をONにして、該当する場面で「T」のアイコンを押すと文字表示される。 ただし以下の問題有り。 ・オープニングムービーは字幕が出ないので設定が分からない ・一部の手紙は翻訳されないのでグーグルレンズ併用が必要 ・WEB検索で時事ネタの検索が必要らしい

This is another fantastic mystery/light puzzle narrative adventure from one of the best in the business. It's a crying shame that these games haven't gotten more attention, as they are amazingly well-crafted and do a superb job of supplying authentic "slice of life" narratives and characters within a very clever puzzle framework that seems clearly inspired by Return of the Obra Dinn. You spend most of your time just perusing through the materials provided in each chapter, with the goal of identifying the exact dates of the various journals. It's probably best to think of yourself as a research assistant that needs to supply an accurate chronology from a wide variety of disparate raw materials. These include everything from fully professionally composed songs, to voice-acted radio and television interviews, to letters and other forms of written materials. Through these items, you get a fantastic sense of the characters and culture involved and develop an investment in not only the main characters, but the supporting players involved at various stages of their lives and careers. You're also expected to do a bit of external searching to solve the game's clever puzzles to arrive at the correct dates. Players of Sheinman's previous games might find it a bit more difficult because you have to input the full dates yourself (there are no "multiple choice" elimination games here.) However, I found that the puzzles are designed in a way that greatly reduces the need to brute force solutions, although I will admit there were a couple journals that I did need to do a bit of guesswork on, but it's usually easy enough to eliminate a significant range of dates and reduce the number of attempts that are made. For anyone who has any interest in detective stories, the Pop Culture of the '90s, or just plain well-crafted worlds, I cannot recommend Riley and Rochelle highly enough. And give the other games in this "series" a try too: Rivals and Conspiracy! are both available on Steam and well worth the purchase price as well.

R&R is a wonderful deduction game with a great soundtrack and story. Highly recommended if you're a fan of Return of the Obra Dinn or just want to listen to some good tunes while working through the deduction. The story and journal entries were engaging and really felt like a view into the lifes of the characters.

This is a relatively short, fun little puzzler. The true ending was heartwarming and I was invested in the main characters. Looking forward to replaying one day soon.

I thought this would be a sapphic romance story but one of the protagonists is a man :(