Games worth discovering

Solve candy crush-like puzzles to save the Island, while battling depression | Rocco's Island-review

2K View2023-01-08

Rocco's Island is an atmospheric point-and-click adventure game with a big focus on puzzles and storytelling. Released last year on PC, Rocco's Island: Ring to End the Pain has been recently ported to mobile platforms as Rocco's Island: Pocket Edition. It is exactly the same game on PC, except for the newly adapted touch controls.

With its high-spirited storytelling, children's book art-style, and entertaining puzzling elements, Rocco's Island might look like it's a game made for kids, and it can still be for kids, but it's really not. The game constantly deals with sadness and is quietly depressing and traumatic on the inside.

Our character is Evelyn, a troubled teenager with a traumatic past, randomly waking up on an foreign island full of secrets in both science and magic. An innocent mistake brought forth by her depressing memories suddenly triggers the countdown to the destruction of the whole island, and it’s up to you to reverse it and save its inhabitants.

The Island is divided into four kingdoms and you must journey through all of them, help the different inhabitants, the four kings, in order to acquire the information to Rocco’s whereabouts, the only one that can help you reverse the doomsday countdown.

The main gameplay is all about pointing Evelyn where to go, collecting objects, items, and solving puzzles and riddles along the way.

If you’re an avid mobile gamer, then you’ll instantly recognize that two of the main puzzles are just literally Candy Crush, and 2048.

The riddles on the other hand are pretty easy with the multiple-choice setup, but an interesting ordeal to experience nonetheless.

Every failure you get on the puzzles and riddles triggers earthquakes and will advance the countdown of the destruction, fail enough times and the island gets destroyed. There are consequences to your choices and considering the puzzles are too easy for my tastes even in the more complex later stages, it's a nice balance between being unremarkably easy and frustratingly hard.

As Evelyn travels across the four different kingdoms, she’ll know more about the inhabitants of the island, its history, the four different kings, as well as herself having to face and handle her traumatic past.

The point-and-click mouse gameplay has been translated well to touch controls, but there are some slight accuracy difficulties in selecting stuff, as there are items and objects that are a little too small. Rocco's Island is beatable in under five hours, less if Evelyn moved a little bit faster, as I find that she moves very slowly for my tastes, making the travel a bit tedious at times.

Rocco's Island is a cross between children’s storybooks and old school Adobe flash games with its charming art and lethargic animation style. The abundant candy crush-like puzzle elements are heavily contrasted by its serious depressing tone that in the end, concludes in a short but provocative atmospheric adventure game.

Mentioned games