Rosewater review

• Reviews by Johnny Nys
• Published:

You’ll surely want to rustle up a copy of this rootin'-tootin’ character-driven Western adventure from Grundislav Games

With their latest game, Francisco González and his Grundislav Games studio have firmly established themselves as one of the big ranchers on the adventure game plains. After their previous title Lamplight City and six years of production on a new game set in the same universe, the indie developer brings Rosewater to our screens, a wonderful Western point-and-click pixel art adventure with so much branching content you won’t be able to see it all in a single playthrough. You’ll get to choose your own approach and play in the style you prefer, which alters the storyline and changes how you’ll need to deal with future obstacles. The wait for its release was clearly worth it, as this is masterful, cinematic storytelling, where the journey and evolving camaraderie are more important than the destination.

Which doesn’t mean that Rosewater‘s finale isn’t worth the fifteen or so hours of mostly side missions leading up to it. A suspenseful ending like this one is essential for creating such a memorable experience, but when it punctuates a story in which you see the characters grow along the way, it leaves an even bigger impression. While the puzzles might be a tad on the easy side, González and co-writer Jess Haskins have taken the time to fully flesh out their characters, giving them all backstories, unique personalities, and thus specific traits and different ways that they can be utilized. While the playable protagonist is a woman named Harley Leger (voiced by Maya Murphy in her first adventure game lead role), each and every member of her posse has the potential to star in a game of their own. (I totally appreciated how the intro cutscene credits all the voice actors as stars of the show.) 

The entire world of Vespuccia, of which Rosewater is only one small town, is an alternative, steampunkish version of the United States. In the year 1850, Harley Leger – sister of Lamplight City’s Bill Leger – travels from New Bretagne (this country’s version of New Orleans) to the frontier town of Rosewater in Western Vespuccia (the Far West) to apply for a journalist job at the local paper. Her first assignment is to write a puff piece about frontier showman Jake Ackerman, who’s performing in the local theater. Being a writer myself, I thought it was a lot of fun that you are granted the freedom to compile the article yourself, not by actually writing it but by prompting Harley what each paragraph should focus on. 

After making Jake’s acquaintance and helping him out with a couple of roughnecks, Jake recruits Harley to undertake a treasure hunt for the hidden riches of missing scientist Bennett Clark. Dr. Clark once tried to harness the power of “aethericity,” an energy source present in the very sky itself, with devastating consequences. And so he fled New Bretagne with all the funds of his unfortunate investors and came to Rosewater, but nobody has seen hide nor hair of him since. Harley can’t go it alone, however, so she follows Jake’s lead and picks up some extra team members to help them out. 

Even before that, though, as soon as Harley steps off the train, it’s obvious Rosewater is chock full of choices. When she witnesses a man being thrown out a window, you can decide to get the doctor, call the sheriff, or even to simply ignore the poor guy and keep on walking. Whatever you decide, it’s bound to influence future events. In many conversations, you get to pick the nature of Harley’s reply: helpful, averse, or doubtful. It’s your choice whether you want to play it nice, even complimenting and thanking people all the time, or if you want to act like a contemptible snake, with zero respect for others, picking fights whenever you can, and insulting everyone every step of the way.

All this affects not only the main storyline, but also Harley’s relationship with other characters. Your play style defines Harley’s personality, and also determines which resources will be available later on. Many obstacles will have multiple ways to wrap your lasso around them, but it speaks for itself that calling in help from someone you treated badly earlier might not be so easy. González has stated that his favorite classic adventure is Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood, which became very apparent when I had to choose one of three plans proposed by the other members of my posse on how to rob a passing wagon.

I have only played through the complete game once – so far. I role-played Harley the way I usually play games where choices matter: by being completely myself. I’m not so good at pretending to be someone else, purposely acting and talking to people in a certain way to achieve desired results. But when it comes to Rosewater, I definitely feel the urge to return one day and step into Harley’s “bad” persona, very much out of curiosity to see how the other characters will respond to her, and to find out if the puzzles are more difficult to solve that way.

Harley’s posse comprises the aforementioned showman Jake Ackerman and his assistant, young Danny Luo; Filomeno “Phil” Marquez, a general of the New Spanish revolutionary army; Nadine Redbird, a Native Vespuccian healer; and Lola Johnson, a motorized stagecoach owner voiced by adventure game veteran Leilani Jones Wilmore. At first Lola is nothing more than a hired hand driving your party across the land, but after a while she becomes an integral part of your group as well. My personal favorite in this bunch is Nadine. I really liked her, from her graphic design and angelic-sounding voice actor G.K. Bowes, to her sweet-natured disposition. She was pretty much my go-to person for speaking with in private, and I always felt bad when I made a decision she didn’t approve of.

Rosewater

Genre:	Adventure, Western
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D
Theme:	Team-up, Treasure hunt
Perspective:	Third-Person
Graphic Style:	Pixel art
Gameplay:	Puzzle, Quest
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Long (more than 10 hours)
Difficulty:	Low

While in pursuit of Dr. Bennett, you will face several side missions that don’t have anything to do with the main storyline, but which further develop Harley’s character and her relationships with the posse. These missions can be very short, like dealing with several charlatans tricking unwary travelers or saving an unlucky workman on a clunky oil derrick, or more elaborate quests, like giving therapy to a retired sea captain who once lost his entire crew or helping a band of stage artists fine-tune their performance. There are also more personal missions involving the background of each member in your group. Danny Luo, for instance, might appear a pretty one-dimensional character at first, not interesting enough to talk to, but after his side mission I always made sure to ask him how he was doing, which meant – in my playthrough, at least – spending less time conversing with rambunctious Jake.

In between these side missions, you will find yourself aboard Lola’s coach, where you can freely talk to your friends. But not all of them. You only have time to chat with two or three people before the next mission automatically reveals itself. Thus, you can choose to spread your attention equally among them, always talk to the same people, or you can decide not to talk to anyone at all and just spend your time reading books or playing cards.

No mini-game is required for playing cards, but Rosewater does contain a couple of others, though they could have packed a bit more heat. They are fine additions for variety, but other than one where you have to fix a broken pocket watch, they are very easy. There’s a side mission in which you can help excavate ancient fossils, simply by moving your brush over a section of soil and digging for deeper layers, finding not only bones but also small treasures you might be able to sell later on. You will have to win a contest of shooting the most bottles tossed into the air. And at one point you must go hunting, with rabbits, pheasants or salmon as your campfire dinner of choice, each with its own mini-game or activity. Since I don’t have a taste for rabbit myself, I went fishing. It was certainly a relaxing experience, reeling in the line with a click of a button, and similarly clicking correctly to swing the pole left or right depending on the direction my captive tried to escape. But I’ve got it in my head to go shoot some pheasants next time!

The rest of the gameplay involves a standard point-and-click user interface. You search the scenes with your mouse, and the pointer will change into different icons over hotspots. An ellipsis will show when you can do more with an item, and clicking on it pops up a little menu where you can choose between “look at” or one of a variety of other options like “pick up,” “search,” or “use,” depending on what the game intends you to do with it. A right-click will open up the inventory, or you can move your mouse to the top of the screen where the inventory icon will appear. Within the inventory, a similar menu will usually pop up when you click an item, enabling you to either look at it or select it for use. The latter allows you to combine it with another inventory item, or use it directly in the environment. You will know when it’s compatible with a certain hotspot by a red border appearing around the icon.

While there are a couple of harder puzzles – like, fittingly, how to open up a coconut – most of the inventory challenges are pretty straightforward. Whenever you need a certain item to get past an obstacle, it’s often fairly evident what you require and you can usually find it nearby, such as when you discover a spyglass with its lens missing. Some things might be simple to find but out of reach, so you’ll have to get creative to get your hands on them. You won’t encounter many items you can walk around with for ages until their use becomes obvious. There’s certainly no moon logic involved, nor will you need to try combining dozens of items until something sticks.  

Some inventory items you collect must be read rather than used. There’s a lot of reading to be done in the form of newspapers, journals and letters, holding all sorts of clues as to how to approach certain situations. Clicking on these will automatically trigger a close-up view so you can read them. It might be a bit much for people looking for more interaction, but the style of the writing always fits the context. What I enjoyed most, however, was Harley’s own diary, likewise available through a pop-up icon at the top of the screen. Being a journalist, Harley makes notes as the story advances, which is a great way to find out her inner thoughts on the events transpiring. It also works as a recap function, should you have to leave the game for a while. I certainly appreciated reading all the lore, though I can imagine other players wishing for a voice-over in this instance.

Presented in stunning pixel art, the Western Vespuccian world is a marvel to behold and explore. What struck me most were the beautiful landscapes with distant mountains, the rising sun, the moon in a starry sky, white clouds blanketing the prairie. The streets in the town of Rosewater are alive with pedestrians – and flies. Lots of flies, buzzing all over the place. Grass sways in the breeze, and you’ll pass both peaceful streams and raging rivers. The characters have a distinctive stylistic design with fully rotoscoped animations. The many cinematic close-ups during cutscenes reminded me of how the characters appear in Jordan Mechner’s The Last Express. These bring a much greater sense of dynamism to the game, which is otherwise limited to a standard sideways perspective of the scenes.

Out in the countryside you’ll hear birds, bugs, coyotes – and horses, of course. Fires crackle and water splashes, doors and cupboards come with squeaky hinges, and the sound of footsteps changes depending on the surface. And you can’t have an exciting Western without the occasional gunshot and explosion. Rosewater’s soundtrack is similar to any Western movie you might have seen, with loads of instruments – guitars, pianos, horns, flutes, snare drums, violins and lots more. Most of the music is simply ambient, inconspicuous, but when the cow patty hits the fan it becomes appropriately bombastic. The music was composed by Mark Benis, who also provided the soundtrack for Lamplight City, and at times it seems to contain a pinch of John Williams and Alan Silvestri. At one point, Phil Marquez acquires a guitar of his own and treats the group to a couple of songs, both instrumental and with Spanish vocals.

The game combines both an autosave function and manual saves, so when you feel an important decision is coming up, you can record your progress and try to walk another path afterwards. You could wind up with many save files that way, so I decided not to backtrack but to see the ride through wherever my choices took it. The replayability factor of Rosewater is so alluring, this is one game where I won’t mind starting a new story from the very start.

Final Verdict

The branching storylines leading to alternate solutions is really Rosewater’s ace up its sleeve. If you just want to play through the game once, there’s an abundance of content to experience and always a path that conforms to how you want to behave. But if you’re interested in multiple playthroughs, there are many different decisions you can make that are sure to open up even more to see and do. Either way, it’s a highly entertaining chance to be part of a posse in the Old West – well, an alternate version of it, at least. The rather easy puzzles and mini-games might not exactly strike gold, but the setting is gorgeous and the characters are wonderfully written and acted, making it a joy to spend time with such a diverse, dynamic group. As thoroughly entertained as I was in getting there, I was actually sad when my posse reached its final destination and inevitably rode off into the sunset, so to speak, but it’s great to know that more adventuring awaits when I’m ready to revisit Western Vespuccia once again. 

Johnny played Rosewater on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher.