Journey of a Roach Reviews
The short but sweet Journey of a Roach presents a charming postapocalyptic world.
Journey of a Roach is a bog-standard adventure game built around a single kind of nifty idea. It attempts to ape the style of games like Machinarium, but fails to emulate any of that title's wonderful charm or design sensibilities.
It is, it has to be said, okay. Quite good. Not that bad. Horrid words to give a nice game, but true all the same.
To say I did not like the game would in fact be a lie. I actually had a great time with it (sans the air duct sections). Journey of a Roach is ideal for someone who wants a change of pace in a puzzle game. It is for someone who does not want a complex story line and is looking for an affordable puzzle game for your PC.
Journey of a Roach's strong ideas loses too many of the conventional adventure game's strengths without gaining enough from them to compensate. It can't even retain the strengths of its setting, quickly jettisoning its post-nuclear scene for a standard flavour of cartoon zaniness. Too many basic lessons on how to treat players go unlearnt. Even over its short duration, initially colourful scenarios become sadly static and tired. Journey of a Roach has some promising ideas, but unfortunately struggles to demonstrate them at their best.
Overall, though, the mechanic works great, and fits well with the quirky fun of the game itself. This was a pretty unique and interesting title, and I may find myself playing through again later just to see how it holds up once you know the solutions.
It tries hard but I'm afraid Journey of a Roach needs a good stomping. Yes, I've been waiting all review to say that.