Rosie

Short adventure about a neglected girl who runs away, with charming visuals and simple exploration, but also slow pacing and minimal challenge. This is a story about a young girl named Rosie who lives in a house with her parents, a brother, and a sister. Nobody really seems to care about her, and all they do is yell, so she decides to run away to a nearby town where everyone appears happy. The presentation is nice because the game unfolds like a pop-up book. Each page represents a separate room where you can search for objects to interact with. Rosie can move freely around the room and jump. Objects are not named or marked, but when you get close enough they light up in a bright color, signaling that you can interact with them by pressing the interaction button. Each object has only one interaction, which is usually Rosie commenting with a single word or an image appearing in a speech bubble. Speed is not the game’s strongest quality, as you often have to wait a few seconds for speech bubbles to appear and disappear. The same slowness applies when moving between rooms, requiring several seconds of waiting each time. Although you can adjust the speed in the settings, the difference is barely noticeable. Progression is straightforward, so it is unlikely you will get stuck. There is very little backtracking, which helps prevent the slow room transitions from becoming too frustrating. The game includes light adventure elements, such as collecting a few items and storing them in an inventory. When you are holding the correct item and interact with the appropriate spot, Rosie uses it automatically. Aside from a few moments where you must press simple button sequences or dodge obstacles, there are no real logic puzzles. Interactive objects are colored gray, while objects with no interaction are darker, making it easy to tell them apart. The game also includes a mechanic that allows you to rotate each room and view it from four different sides. This creates a visual effect, as a character or object may appear fully formed from one angle, but when rotated is revealed to be drawn on a thin piece of paper. Rotation is sometimes important because certain objects can only be interacted with from one side, doors being a common example. Most of the time, however, this feature does not affect gameplay and exists mainly as a visual choice to reinforce the pop-up book aesthetic. The game is divided into three main locations, presented as books, each containing only a handful of rooms. The first takes place in the house, followed by an outdoor section, and finally a very short third book that lasts less than a minute. Unfortunately, the experience is very brief, ending in roughly thirty to forty five minutes. This makes sense because there is no save system so the game must be completed in a single sitting. After finishing, the game loops back to the beginning and unlocks a feature called the sanity meter. You keep all collected items, but there is no need to repeat any actions because everything is already completed. The only noticeable changes are strange blobs appearing throughout the game and a few additional visual details. Regardless of whether the sanity meter is filled or not, the ending remains the same.