Roia Review

Water is a force of nature. Heavy rainfall can erode the ground, damaging roads or paths while the rains keep coming down in a short amount of time. But often, the power of water is much slower to show. Constant gentle flowing water can still affect the landscape, but it takes a long time to show. Here’s where you come in, in Roia: you can manipulate the landscape to bend the water to your will and let it flow where you want it to.

Changing Height is at Your Fingertips 

Describing Roia, the gameplay seems so simple: lower or heighten the rocks or the ground to guide the stream of water. You start at the highest top of the mountain and find a friendly bird to guide you. It glides along the mountain top, gently pointing the way, and chirps its approval when you are on the right track.

As the stream goes down the mountain, the landscape changes from green pastures to forests and villages. You encounter sheep, see a campfire that you need to keep burning, a little cabin in the woods, farmers and more. They all depend on your water management skills, either to help them or to make sure the water doesn’t disturb them. So divert the water by making a bank, guide it by making a river bed and so on.

All of this action is at your fingertips in Roia: click the point or points you want to influence. In the bottom right of the screen, there’s a toggle letting you switch from down or up, alternating from making the ground dip or rise. The top left shows the means to influence the sound and music, reset the game or view your achievements. You can pinch to zoom in or out, and use two-fingered swipes to move the screen.

Zen-like Experience With Some Niggles

The controls for Roia are intuitive, and the addition of the bird to guide you is brilliant. Roia looks lovely with its minimalist approach to game design. The smooth background music makes for a zen-like experience, but it’s not all going with the flow. There are certainly some challenges in Roia, making it a perfectly balanced puzzle game.

It sounds very simple, but I’ve found it more challenging than I thought. Often didn’t do my alterations right, had some trouble getting off the mountain and sent the sheep bleating in all directions. I’m pretty sure they weren’t happy with my intervention. At times I found that I had to go back much farther than I thought and re-route it from there. I do wish Roia had included a backspace option to make changes, instead of the only option to just starting over.

At times I wished I could rotate the screen: for instance, when my water flowed behind a large rock that I couldn’t lower any more than I already had. I could see no other solution but go back and re-route it.

Conclusion for Roia

Roia is a wholesome puzzle game that will draw you into a relaxed experience. It knows how to find the right balance of being zen-like and giving you challenges to overcome. That being said, there are some niggles, like a missing backspace and not being able to rotate the screen. People who are looking for a cosy game might give up at having to retrace their steps or even start over when they’ve gone wrong.

But overall, playing Roia was a great experience!

Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot

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