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Röki
Röki
from Wikipedia
Röki
DeveloperPolygon Treehouse
PublisherUnited Label Games
DesignersAlex Kanaris-Sotiriou, Tom Jones
ComposerAether
Engine
Platforms
ReleaseMicrosoft Windows
July 23, 2020
Nintendo Switch
October 15, 2020
PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
October 28, 2021
GenreAdventure game
ModeSingle-player

Röki is an adventure video game developed by British studio Polygon Treehouse and published by United Label Games. It follows Tove, a young girl, traveling into the ancient wilderness to rescue her younger brother Lars from Röki, a pitch-black monster from the pages of a fairy tale.

Gameplay

[edit]

In Röki, the player takes the role of Tove, a young girl journeying into the wilderness to find her brother Lars. Designed to be "a game of brains not brawn",[1] it follows the course of her adventure as she encounters folklore creatures and solves puzzles to unlock paths deeper into the forest.[2]

The gameplay is a modern take on the point and click genre, with players collecting items in a backpack to then be used in the game world to solve puzzles.[3][4] Players can also collect items in a sort of catalogue, which are scattered about the game's setting and can be viewed in Tove's Journal. The Journal also includes a map of each visit-able location and information about it and the characters found within, based on Tove's perspective. The game features accessible controls, like a toggle that highlights all interactive items and characters in one area.[5] There are also mechanics introduced near the end of the game, including switching between an invisibility mask and a revealing mask to free the Stag, and the ability to switch between Tove and her father, Henrik, to solve the last of the game's puzzles. For the latter mechanic, any item collected by either character can then be used by the other as well as the character who collected it.

Plot

[edit]

Deep in the mountains, a young girl named Tove lives with her father, Henrik, and her younger brother Lars. When Lars was just a baby, his and Tove's mother, Eva, died, leaving Henrik grief-stricken and spending most of his days asleep in front of the fire. Thus it is left up to Tove to care for her father and her more imaginative younger brother Lars, who loves fairy tales and often acts like he can see the creatures from those folk tales. One night, as Tove is putting Lars to bed, she decides to read Lars their mother's favorite fairy tale, about the Jötnar and the Baby, which Eva had always told Tove was real. The fairy tale goes that there existed four giant guardians of an enchanted forest, Jötunbjörn the Bear of Autumn, Jötunhjort the Stag of Summer, Jötunúlfur the Wolf of Spring, and Jötunravn the Raven of Winter. Soon humans came to the forest, and a humble woodcutter caught the Raven's eye, falling in love with him. The Raven took human form and assumed the name Rörka, marrying the man and becoming pregnant. However, because the child was only half-human, he was wild and dangerous. Horrified, the other three guardians imprisoned Rörka and her son in the prison realm of Utangard.

That very same night, the children's home is attacked by a pitch-black creature. The children managed to escape down the mountain, but Henrik is left trapped beneath debris and surrounded by fire, and he forces Tove and Lars to leave him behind. The two children escape into the forest at the base of the mountain, intending to reach the nearby town for help, but Lars, momentarily forgetting the danger and distracted by his imagination, is separated from his sister and captured by the monster. Tove manages to pursue the two to a portal at the edge of a lake, and sees Lars just as the monster's claw grabs him and drags Lars through the portal. Tove is unable to reach the portal in time as it closes. Lars is taken to Utangard, where the monster is revealed to be Röki the son of Rörka, who intends to use Lars, because he is forest-born and thus touched by magic, as a sacrifice in a ritual of dark magic to transform Röki into a human, intending to give her son the life she believes he deserves as humans cannot accept monsters. The ritual had previously been attempted before, but has failed each time, with the previous children dying before Röki could be transformed. During the ritual, Lars and Röki begin to grow close, and develop a friendly bond, which Rörka writes off and tries to prevent her son from making it more painful than it has to be.

Meanwhile, dawn breaks in the forest, and Tove decides to set off and reopen the portal to rescue Lars, finding she can see the many magical creatures of the forest after nearly getting through the portal, and learns that she needs a Jötunn to fully open the way. Thus, Tove sets off to find the three guardians. During this time she meets and helps various folkloric creatures inhabiting the forest. Tove's adventures in the forest include; meeting the Tree of Many and the Waytrees, which became disconnected from their Great Mother Tree thanks to Rörka's ravens, becoming friends with two trollsisters, the last of the trollfolk that once lived in the forest, reuniting a family of Krokelings with their mother, giving an offering to the Fossegrim, who teaches Tove how to control water, helping the Yule Cat whose black fur has grayed, freeing a Nokken, the spirit of a drowned girl, rescuing a trapped Älva, and defeating the giant spider Widow Drau and freeing her prey, the cave Tomte. During this adventure, Tove also finds mysterious illness spreading throughout the forest, a fungus blight, and meets with a mysterious voice who gives her two recipes to help Tove in her quest, one for a mask of invisibility and another for a mask to reveal hidden beings. After collecting all the ingredients and freeing two of the Guardians, the Wolf and the Bear, from the source of forest's illness, the Nattamare Parasites, the voice reveals itself to be a Shroomi, a living mushroom. With the masks made by the Shroomi, as well as a cure for the blight, Tove is able to free the Stag, the final guardian, and end the forest's illness. While freeing the guardians from the Nattamare Parasites inflicted upon them by Rörka as they slept, Tove undergoes visions that reveal forgotten memories involving her mother, including an old song her mother taught her, that it was Tove and not Henrik who dropped her mother's belongings down a well after Tove's mom passed, and fixing corrupted memories of the events prior to Eva's death.

After awakening all the guardians and getting each to agree to help Tove, as well as the Bear and the Stag revealing regret for banishing Rörka and that she had run after Röki's birth out of fear of her husband's reaction before being imprisoned by her brothers and sister, the guardians open the portal for Tove to Utangard. Henrik is revealed to be alive, and recalling the nights events, rushes down the mountain on foot to find his children, retracing their steps through the forest, and arriving just after Tove passes through the portal as it closes. Seeing that Utangard (the giant castle) is across the lake, Henrik takes a nearby boat and rows towards it. Henrik arrives at the castle, but because he did not pass through the portal, it is simply a normal castle, leaving him and Tove separated on two different planes. Despite only feeling a ghostly presence of one another, which Henrik originally misinterprets to be Eva, the two work on their different sides to get through the castle. While exploring, Henrik finds leftover equipment and notes of a prior expedition to the castle, led by a man looking for his missing son, Elias, though like Henrik, he had not passed though the guardian's portal and was thus unable to enter the true Utangard, meaning he was unable to rescue his son. Unable to go any further, Henrik uses a cage to allow Tove to reach the top of the tower where Röki, Rörka, and Lars are.

At the top of the tower, Tove finds the ritual almost complete, Lars near-death, as is Rörka, the ritual having taken a stronger toll on her than she thought. Despite a plea from Tove to use her instead of Lars, and Lars stating that Rörka is turning her son into something he doesn't want to be, Rörka continues with the ritual. Upset over being called a monster, Rörka sends Tove into her repressed memory of Eva's death; The family's car crashed in the forest as they were on their to the hospital for Eva to give birth. Henrik asked Tove to find a nearby payphone, but Eva stopped her from running off and give birth to Lars in the cold of the winter forest, dying shortly afterward from exposure. Rörka tries to make Tove think she is the true monster for letting her family down and leading to Eva's death, but Tove is able to ward off Rörka's manipulations and convince Röki to stop the transformation and save Lars, his friend. Though the ritual has been stopped and Lars saved, Rörka, still greatly weakened and near death, is greatly angered. However, her brothers and sister, the other guardians, arrive and apologize for what they did to her and to Röki. They explain how Tove helped them, and see that the forest can only be restored with all of them leaving for 'the next realm.' The other three want Rörka to come with them, and convince her that Röki should be allowed to make his own path, free of his mother. The guardians depart, wishing Tove well and Rörka apologizing for all the pain she caused while hoping that her son finds the life he deserves.

Some time later, Tove calls for Lars, alerting to him that its time for dinner, made by Henrik for a change, who has also completed rebuilding the house. As Tove and Henrik run off-screen, Lars hears the footsteps and roar of Röki behind him, and tells him that their 'adventuring' is finished for the day, and time for the two of them to return home. It is left ambiguous whether or not only Lars can see Röki, or if Tove and Henrik can see him too as they did at the start of the game.

Development

[edit]

Polygon Treehouse pitched and secured funding for Röki as part of the fourth year round of funding from the UK Games Fund.[6] The soundtrack was composed by Scottish composer Aether.[7][8]

Reception

[edit]

Critical reception

[edit]

Röki received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic.[16][17][14]

Tola Onanuga of The Guardian calls the game an "impressively rich point-and-click adventure game". She finds some of the puzzles challenging, but when she took time to survey her surroundings - generally fairly easy. She also likes the game's "striking cel-shaded design". However, she scores the game 3 out of 5 stars.[11]

Pascal Tekaia of Adventure Gamers writes that the cast of characters is impressive. He praises the dialog and voice acting, even though each line of subtitled dialog is accompanied by only one spoken word, or an effect like a sigh or a giggle. The reviewer also praises music (even though it is "a bit lacking in strong themes, particularly during the narrative’s high points") and sound effects. He likes backgrounds that "look like something out of a storybook" and often are animated, however he finds some of the locations too cluttered. As far as the difficulty curve of the puzzles is concerned, the reviewer finds it "pretty gentle". In the end he gives the game 4 and a half of 5 stars.[18]

Eurogamer's reviewer praises scenery, writing: "Caves and temples and forests are hardly new to video games, but they seem freshly wrought here (...)". He appreciates the way the game mixes fairy-tales with reality: "Röki's about woodland ponds, but it's also about pond scum. (...) And it's about magic, but what it's really about is the stuff that magic can't undo." Ultimately he summarises the game: "It's earthy magic. It's fantastic."[19]

PushSquare reviewer writes that mechanically it is another point-and-click game, but "it never strays into the territory of solutions so obtuse no sane person could possibly figure it out like point-and-clicks of yore". The reviewer praises environment design, writing that "This game is beautiful" and presents "a lovingly crafted world", even though "Tove's character and her brother leave a bit to be desired".[15]

Jamie Latour from The Gamer admires the game's user-friendliness, writing: "Roki, in my mind, does adventure game mechanics extremely well." She notes features like the ability to highlight all interactive items nearby "to prevent hours of lost wandering", and access to the journal, containing a map and collectible item lists, stating "it felt like a quality-of-life adjustment that this genre should always have from now on."[20]

Accolades

[edit]

The game was nominated for "Best Debut Game" at The Game Awards 2020,[21] nominated in categories "Debut Game" and "British Game" from the BAFTA Game Awards,[22] and won "Best Indie Game" at the DevGamm awards in 2020.[23] It won "Best Traditional Adventure", "Readers' Choice" for "Best Adventure", and nominee for "Best Adventure" at the 2020 Adventure Gamers Aggie Awards.[24] Most recently, Röki was a nominee for "Best Writing in a Video Game" by the Writers' Guild of Great Britain in 2021.[25]

References

[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia
from Grokipedia
Röki is a narrative adventure developed by the British independent studio Treehouse and published by United Label. Inspired by Scandinavian folklore, it centers on Tove, a young girl who ventures into a mythical, snow-covered to her missing , encountering forgotten monsters, ancient puzzles, and hidden legends along the way. The game emphasizes themes of loss, , and redemption through non-violent and accessible controls, making it suitable for players of all ages. Röki was initially released for Windows and macOS via and GOG on July 23, 2020, with subsequent ports to on October 15, 2020, and , , , and Xbox Series X/S on October 28, 2021. involves point-and-click in hand-drawn 2D environments, where players collect items, solve environmental puzzles, and interact with folklore-inspired to progress Tove's journey. The title features an atmospheric soundtrack and detailed art direction, drawing from Nordic fairy tales to create a dark yet touching contemporary story. Polygon Treehouse, based in Cambridge, UK, and co-founded by former Guerrilla Games and PlayStation art directors Tom Jones and Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou, created Röki as their debut project, focusing on emotional depth and visual storytelling. Critically, the game has been well-received for its narrative and aesthetics, earning a Metascore of 76 out of 100 based on 36 reviews, indicating generally favorable reception. It has also garnered positive user feedback, with an average score of 7.7 on Metacritic from 63 ratings, highlighting its appeal as an inclusive adventure.

Gameplay

Core Mechanics

Röki employs a traditional point-and-click interface, allowing players to control the Tove as she navigates a hand-drawn 2D environment inspired by Scandinavian folklore. Players direct Tove by clicking or using controller inputs to move through the world, highlighting interactive elements with a dedicated button that reveals hotspots accompanied by an audio cue for confirmation. Core interactions involve examining objects, conversing with non-player characters, and managing an accessed via a system, where items are collected from the environment and dragged to combine or apply to other elements, facilitating progression without any combat or failure states. A key organizational tool is Tove's journal, which serves as a central hub for tracking essential information throughout the adventure. It includes a dynamically updating map that charts explored areas and connections between locations, alongside a notes section for recording clues derived from environmental observations or dialogues. The journal also catalogs collectibles, such as folklore-inspired objects, and lore entries that expand on the world's mythical elements, encouraging thorough exploration while providing optional badges for discoveries. To enhance inclusivity, Röki incorporates several accessibility options tailored to diverse player needs. These include visual aids like item highlighting, which flashes interactive objects on screen and auto-pops important pickups even when the inventory is closed, as well as simplified controls supporting multiple input methods such as single-stick navigation, mouse and keyboard, or remappable buttons without requiring rapid repetitions or timed precision. An adjustable hint system integrates seamlessly through the journal and occasional oracle messages, offering progressive guidance to assist puzzle-solving without spoiling solutions, alongside features like optional vibration and clear tutorials for onboarding. In the later stages, the game introduces advanced to deepen interactions, including mask-switching that alters Tove's abilities and environmental —such as revealing hidden paths or entities—for specific sequences. Additionally, brief character-switching becomes available, enabling control between Tove and her companion Nalle to facilitate elements in puzzles, with shared access ensuring fluid progression. These features build on the foundational systems, integrating puzzles narratively to emphasize and discovery over challenge.

Puzzles and Exploration

Röki emphasizes non-linear within its hand-drawn, folklore-inspired environments, including dense forests, remote villages, and mystical wilderness areas that evoke Scandinavian landscapes. Players navigate these interconnected regions, often requiring to access hidden paths unlocked through the strategic use of collected items, such as tools or environmental objects, which reveal previously inaccessible areas like caves or portals. This design encourages thorough investigation, with over a dozen explorable locations connected via a system that supports free traversal and fosters a of discovery in the game's atmospheric world. The game's puzzles integrate seamlessly with exploration, featuring a variety of types rooted in Nordic mythology, such as inventory-based combinations where players merge objects like herbs or artifacts to create solutions, environmental manipulations involving tools applied to interactive elements in the surroundings (e.g., using a makeshift key on a folklore-imbued door), and logic-based challenges that draw on mythological lore, like deciphering or patterns inspired by creatures such as trolls or tomte. These puzzles are tied to the narrative's folkloric elements, requiring observation of subtle environmental clues, such as symbols from Scandinavian tales, to progress without overt combat. Core interaction controls, like pointing and clicking to examine or use items, facilitate these mechanics in a straightforward manner. Collectibles, known as "loot," play a key role in enhancing exploration, with 48 optional items tracked in protagonist Tove's journal that not only grant "wilderness explorer" badges but also provide contextual hints for puzzle-solving or reveal missed optional areas upon thorough searching. This system incentivizes comprehensive world traversal, as loot items often relate to mythological motifs and can subtly guide players toward hidden paths or alternative solutions. To maintain in this narrative-driven experience, Röki balances puzzle difficulty through contextual hints derived from the journal's loot entries, in-game character dialogues offering subtle folklore-based advice, and an optional highlight feature for interactable objects, preventing frustration while preserving the game's relaxing pace. Puzzles escalate gradually, with early ones focusing on basic item use and later challenges incorporating multi-step logic tied to myths, ensuring a logical progression that rewards curiosity over trial-and-error.

Story

Plot Summary

Röki's narrative follows Tove, a young girl grieving the loss of her mother, as she sets out to rescue her younger brother after their family home is destroyed in a devastating fire and he is abducted by the monstrous Röki, a creature from the family's tales. Accompanied by the loyal family dog Nalle, who aids in navigation and provides emotional companionship throughout the ordeal, Tove begins her search amid the ruins of the farm and the encroaching woods, piecing together clues about the abduction. The story progresses through three distinct acts, shifting from the familiar, snow-covered rural landscape into increasingly otherworldly domains. In the second act, Tove enters a mythical realm teeming with elements, where she allies with ancient guardian spirits depicted as majestic animal-like beings, such as the bear guardian and the wolf guardian, by freeing them from curses and corruption that plague the land. Along this journey, Tove uncovers fragmented family memories that reveal hidden secrets about her heritage and the origins of the monsters she encounters. The quest culminates in the third act within the foreboding realm of Utangard, a desolate domain of ruins and shadows, where Tove confronts a dark tied to Röki's motives. The resolution brings Lars's return but leaves lingering ambiguity about the full cost of their reunion and the enduring impact on Tove's understanding of loss and family.

Themes and Elements

Röki draws extensively from Swedish and , incorporating mythical creatures such as trolls, nisse (gnome-like household spirits), and water entities like the Nokken and , reimagined within a contemporary framework that emphasizes over confrontation. These elements are adapted to portray outcasts lurking in forests, rivers, and caves, reflecting the darker, more ambiguous aspects of Scandinavian myths where monsters often embody societal fears or natural forces. Developers at Treehouse, including co-founders Kanaris-Sotiriou and Tom Jones, cited the inspirational value of these tales in conveying simple yet profound messages about human (and inhuman) experiences, allowing the game's antagonists like Röki to serve as embodiments of folklore's tragic figures. At its core, Röki explores themes of , family bonds, and confronting childhood fears, with Tove's emotional journey symbolizing the process of healing through interactions with guardian-like spirits and . The weaves personal loss—stemming from family tragedy—into encounters that challenge Tove's perceptions, fostering growth as she navigates distorted memories and builds tentative alliances, underscoring the restorative power of familial ties. This thematic focus is amplified by the game's hopeful resolutions to dark motifs, where isolation gives way to connection, drawing from the developers' intent to use Scandinavian stories for deeper emotional resonance without resorting to violence. Environmental storytelling further enhances these motifs, employing dilapidated homes and enchanted, snow-covered woods to evoke a profound sense of isolation and wonder in the Nordic wilderness. Ruined structures hint at forgotten histories and emotional voids, while shifting shadows and interconnected roots in the forests mirror Tove's internal struggles, blending the eerie with the magical to immerse players in a world where feels alive and introspective. This approach reinforces the game's blend of dread and discovery, inviting reflection on how ancient tales can illuminate modern vulnerabilities.

Development and Release

Development Process

Polygon Treehouse was founded in 2017 by Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou and Tom Jones, both former art directors at under PlayStation, marking Röki as the studio's debut title under their leadership. The project drew inspiration from classic point-and-click adventure games such as and , emphasizing emotional storytelling centered on themes of kindness and family amid tragedy, while incorporating a hand-drawn, storybook-style art direction. Development of Röki spanned from 2017 to 2020, utilizing the Unity engine to facilitate cross-platform compatibility and enable a 3D environment with cinematic camera controls. In 2018, the team secured funding through a grant from the Games Fund, which supported the creation of a high-quality demo and further production efforts. The soundtrack, composed by Aether, was designed to evoke the atmospheric setting with its evocative tones enhancing the narrative immersion. A key challenge during production involved balancing puzzle accessibility—achieved through in-world hints and modernized mechanics—with the depth of the emotional narrative, ensuring the game remained approachable for a broad audience without diluting its story-driven focus. The team iterated extensively on character designs for mythical elements, such as trolls and other Scandinavian creatures, to humanize them as misunderstood beings with emotional depth, while prioritizing in their Nordic representations through consultations like those with lore expert Kari Kinn for authentic .

Release and Platforms

Röki was initially released for Microsoft Windows and macOS via Steam and GOG.com on July 23, 2020. The Nintendo Switch version followed on October 15, 2020. Console ports arrived in 2021, with versions for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S launching simultaneously on October 28, 2021; these were published by United Label Games, a subsidiary of CI Games. No major updates or have been released since , though minor patches addressed bug fixes and improved compatibility, such as enhancements for supporting up to and 60 frames per second. The game is primarily distributed digitally across all platforms, including , , , and . A limited physical edition for was released by Super Rare Games in August (4,000 copies). It launched at approximately $19.99 USD, with frequent discounts available on and console stores thereafter. Röki supports localization in multiple languages to broaden its appeal, particularly to European audiences, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (), Russian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Swedish for interface, full audio, and subtitles.

Reception

Critical Reviews

Röki garnered generally favorable reviews from critics, earning aggregate scores of 76/100 on for the PC version based on 36 reviews and 76/100 for the version based on 36 reviews. The game also holds an average score of 78 on from 64 critics, placing it in the "Strong" category. Critics widely praised Röki's atmospheric art style and emotional narrative, which draws deeply from Scandinavian to create a touching, fairy-tale-like experience. highlighted the seamless integration of folklore elements with poignant human and polished that feels both modern and nostalgic. The Guardian commended the charming cel-shaded visuals and unsettling yet compelling child-abduction plot that evokes Scandi-noir tension amid snowy landscapes. Reviewers noted the puzzles as largely intuitive and logical, contributing to an accessible suitable for players of , with non-violent mechanics and universal themes of family and grief that deliver strong emotional impact despite the game's simple point-and-click structure. Some compared its moody, exploratory atmosphere to titles like Inside, emphasizing the sense of isolation and wonder in its folklore-infused world. Common criticisms focused on the game's brevity, with most playthroughs lasting 9-12 hours, which some felt limited deeper exploration despite the rich setting. Occasional puzzle obtuseness was also mentioned, where solutions required abstract item combinations or knowledge that could stump players without hints. Reviews of the 2021 console ports for and Series X/S commended the strong controller support and smooth adaptation of the point-and-click interface.

Accolades and Commercial Performance

Röki received several nominations and awards following its release, recognizing its debut quality and narrative strengths as an indie title. It was nominated for Best Debut at 2020. The game also earned nominations for Debut Game and British Game at the 2021 BAFTA Games Awards. Among its wins, Röki took home Best at the DevGamm Awards 2020. At the Develop:Star Awards 2021, Polygon Treehouse won for Best Micro Studio, while Röki itself secured the Best Narrative award. These accolades highlighted the game's innovative and the studio's successful transition to indie development. Commercially, Röki achieved solid performance as a digital-only debut title, with over 88,000 units sold on by late 2025, generating approximately $1.1 million in gross revenue. The game benefited from long-tail sales through Steam bundles and promotional events, contributing to its sustained visibility without a physical release. Its availability on further supported portable play, aligning with the platform's audience for narrative adventures.

References

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