Rosewater Steam Charts & Stats

This was so much fun! Way back, I played the demo and was instantly hooked. The full game was even better than I had expected. While you have a destination your characters travel to, it's more of a "the journey is the goal" story. Loved the graphics and rotoscoping animations, the music was just beautiful, the puzzles pretty great, and the voice acting perfect. You hear so many familiar voices which is a real treat, most notably Wild West legend Arthur Morgan, THE Roger Clark himself plays several roles here. Pretty fitting cause I got some RDR2 vibes playing this game. <3 What I appreciated was that each character in your little posse was fleshed out with backstories and hopes&dreams, even a bit more than the main character. And choices you make matter, that was a cool feature. It doesn't just influence the relationships between you and your new friends: What you say or how you treat people can come back to either reward you or bite you in the butt later in the game. Loved that! All in all, I enjoyed this game a lot and will go back in for the New Game+! Can't wait for the audio commentary too! Big shout-out to Grundislav Games' other projects here: A Golden Wake, Shardlight, and especially Lamplight City were absolute gems! Games like these just reinforce my love for point&click adventures and I am absolutely delighted that they're still being made!

After having played and enjoyed Lamplight City 5 years ago, I was curious to check a new game from the same developers set in the same alternate history world. I did expect that, as with their previous projects not being American, will affect my liking or understanding of some elements. While additionally, this time is was to be a wild west themed game – something I was never a huge fan of either. But Grundislav Games have shown an incredibly fresh and very non-linear approach to designing adventure titles, so I was interested nonetheless. And while Rosewater is, in my opinion, a weaker overall experience than Lamplight City, it has a lot of wonderful elements of its own that may interest you. So, just like with the previous projects of the developer, this is a point and click adventure game built on the Adventure Game Studio that despite its very very old age still manages to get a lot of new and updated features. Being designed with pre-rendered elements in mind it does tend to look a bit blurry in full-screen, as most of the projects made on it have a rather low native resolution. But it gets things done and because of it tends to be liked by adventure gaming community. Especially since Rosewater is yet another example of a game that isn’t your “typical classic” title and does many things, the titles from the 80s and 90s usually didn’t do. In practice, Rosewater is a “road movie” adventure, where after a relatively short introduction, a crew of newly met people goes on a “quest” that will, hopefully, net them lots of money. Along that path they will encounter problems that need to be solved, which often involve several different approaches, some of which have long-lasting consequences. The relationships between the main character and the rest of the team will grow based on your actions and will affect the last act of the game. And even some of the smaller adventures on the road will be unique for each playthrough, since they are either fully randomized or depend on your current standing with the character. At its best, this works like a perfect mix of more “classic” adventure design and the more linear and “cinematic” design popularized by Telltale Games, where you get enough freedom to think and solve issues on your own, but also every situation is succinct and directed enough to feel “cinematic”. The issue is that the game is not always at its best. The beginning of the game feels messy, because the first act doesn’t clearly ease you into what the game actually is. So as you perform your first tasks in the location that narratively you expect to become the main location for the game, the way the game wants you to breeze past details feels odd. And only starts working when you realize that every location is just a part of the journey and you shouldn’t get attached to any. Sadly, some of the locations and events/tasks tied to them are worse than the others too. The things that game expects from you are inconsistent, sometimes allowing you to think ahead and do things on the tiniest hint and sometimes requiring you to talk to everyone about everything before you’re allowed to do something blindingly obvious. Some of the gameplay inconsistencies also stem from the developers ambitions – sometimes an event might be timed and it doesn’t feel like there’s enough time to even understand what is expected of you and sometimes an event feels narratively timed, but isn’t and you can faff around. And some minor frustrations also pop in from time to time, like when you travel with the group between screens you have to wait until everyone slowly walks into their idle position before you can do anything. There is a lot of good in the game. You do get to like your companions and the story takes interesting turns. The non-linear approach to solving issues feels very good, even if more limiting than it felt in Lamplight City. It’s a solid game, just quite flawed. And how much you will enjoy it would depend on how much you get to like the characters and the world. The game does have a demo and it’s worth checking it out. I just still think that Lamplight City is the strongest game from the developer as of now.

Beautiful backgrounds and lifelike animations are a given for a Grundislav production, but the work to bring on union voice actors really pays off with this game. The performances are outstanding. I had a great time with Rosewater and played 100% on my Steam Deck without an issue.

Unenjoyable and problematic in its approach to glamorizing the wild west.

more like dogwater the game misled me by offering meaningful choice at the beginning and then ripping it away piece by piece as it goes on. don't be tricked into playing beyond 2 hours like i was.

Ambitious, gripping, and filled with a variety of choices and conclusions building on each other. A really fascinating narrative point and click that's experimenting with the format in all kinds of clever ways. Definitely worth the buy.

A lovely, long, dynamic experience. As expected, everything is top notch: voice acting, story line, character development, puzzles, etc. The wild west isn't my favourite setting but this wasn't cheesy at all and explored many facets of the genre. Excellent job from the developers!

While Rosewater is definitely an Adventure game, it is not a typical point-and-click offering. Yes, there are puzzles and lots of dialogue, and the story (set in the "Wild West", but in a completely fictional country) keeps your interest. But to me, it seems that the characters themselves are the stars of the show. Adventure fans will enjoy this little gem, which took a little over 20 hours to complete. Recommended 8.5/10.

Way too easy. It is more of a visual novel than a real adventure. And it gets boring after a while, cause the puzzles aren't really hard (not to say a joke). I started to fast-click through the dialogues after half the game.

There is currently a (renewed) revival of grandiose point & click adventures. Rosewater definitely fits in perfectly here. Beautiful graphics and animations, a great soundtrack and fantastic voice acting combine to create a great western atmosphere. The story is exciting, the characters interesting and there are various endings and a certain freedom of choice - which was not always immediately comprehensible (but is nevertheless well integrated into the game mechanics). The puzzles were also very pleasantly designed - as you often change locations, you never carry an unnecessarily full inventory around with you - very nice, streamlined game design. Can only recommend this game.