RŌA Reviews

You can walk around a Windows Media Player visualization where there are models of a bunch of humanoids and one very large humanoid. You can 'blink' and 'stare' to reset visual effects and increase the amplitude of a colour separation smearing effect respectively. Kinda neat, but if you're even mildly interested in this you'll be wanting to buy AENTITY to receive RŌA for free instead of purchasing it separately. This is a tech demo for AENTITY.

Jam your thumbs into your eyes and hold them there for 38 seconds, and ask your grandparents for a drink of water. Remove your thumbs from your eyes, watch your grandparent walk across the room to get your water, and you will have saved 3$.

Short game, but it has interesting visuals and is easy to 100%.

For 3€ this is way overpriced, but I got it in sale and although I didn't "get" the game, nor any achievements or understanding of where an ending should be or what kind of interaction my clicks actually do have on the world, I still could kinda enjoy it for the brilliant "Beksinski in Glitch hell"-aesthetics and the general sense of outerspacy, mysterious dread I got from it alone. Too cryptic for my taste, not quite a game, but it does belong in a museum and may be worth checking out.

I'm a huge fan of Aentity but so far I havn't found the drive to "zen me" in RŌA. I think it's my personal taste when it comes to the fact that this feels more "pixely" combined with the colour choises here wich just makes me feel ill. However it's still a low price game so the "risk" is worth it to see wether you like it more then I do. I still see the beauty behind this so it's hard to put the dislike-stamp on i. Maybe this was better off added to Aentity then a seperate buy (even with the option to recieve it for free in the bundle). I will push myself a little bit more to see if it opens up to me

This isn't a game, it's an "art experience" that's been dumped on Steam, presumably because the local art galleries took out a restraining order on the "artists" who had no other choice but to pay Valve $100 to dump this on Steam. The idea behind this "art" is you are presented with a FPS environment, but instead of, you know, a game being there, it's just a mangled bunch of trippy shaders that make everything look weird, bad, and multicolour. Apparently that's so amazing it should be a paid product on Steam. Which is for PC games, not whatever this garbage is. For those unfamiliar with what actually makes something a game, a "game loop" describes the interaction and feedback a gamer has when playing a game. Tetris, for example, has a game loop where a random block appears, the gamer interacts with the block to position it, and then the game decides if that finishes a row or not, increases the players score if any rows were completed, then gives the gamer another block to position. Counter-Strike has a game loop where a player seeks another player, tests their skill against that player by shooting them or being shot, the computer rewards the player if they win, and then if the player survives, they repeat that loop. There's no loop here, no true interactive feedback. It simply is not a game, it cannot be "played". You don't have to take my word about how bad this software is, we can measure the interest in a product by how much people bothered to use it. RŌA has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that it absolutely failed to capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is "Resting", for not doing anything within the "art experience" for a while, trivial to achieve, but less than 7 percent of users bothered to get that far before uninstalling it. That's a tiny, tiny proportion of gamers who even bothered with this. Ouch. The poor quality of this software is also reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak user number was only 2 people (presumably the "artist" and their therapist). This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only user activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 110,000 real, actual games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality "art experience" is to be expected. RŌA is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. I can only recommend real, interactive, playable games to gamers.

This is NOT a "game", let's make that clear right now. There is nothing to kill, no objective, and no points to score or Steam global high score list for ROA here. This is more of an "experience simulator" where you get to sort of move around and focus your eyes on images that only your imagination can explain to your eyes. Take a quick look at my "First Play on Launch Day" video HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM1dlxS90qs I recommend this one, especially if you aren't expecting Call fo Duty or even a pong game. It is what it says it is, and nothing more. Comparison Versus AENTITY (by the same developer here on Steam).. I honestly like AENTITY a lot more than this one, even with it's $12 USD price tag compared to the budget $3 price tag on this one. AENTITY just seems to be a lot more visually impressive and offer a lot of detail than this one does. Both RoA and AENTITY are very similar however, AENTITY is just a much better product in my eyes.

TL;DR If you see it as a art piece, and that's what you're looking for, the price is fair. If you're looking for a game with an explicit goal and would feel cheated by a lack of content, it's not for you. You should know before buying this that it isn't really a game. This is a 3D art piece. It has one room in it, and if you just kind of hang out and appreciate the scenery, you can create some really interesting screen shots. I have some difficulty justifying its price though, and I suspect that's why it comes free with AENTITY; There's not really much to it. On the other hand, there's a certain amount of entitlement that comes with any art piece, to claim that your art is worth something. When you think about the actual experience that you get from a book vs a painting, the book seems like a much better use of your money. But we buy art anyways, despite the price. If you can find a reason for that, then maybe you'll have a reason to buy this game. Honestly, I think steam wasn't the right platform to sell this on. The team really should have sold this on a more experimental site like itch.io or something where they could garner a more artful minded audience.

ROA is a proto-program. It feels to me to be a proof-of-concept which is done much better in AENTITY. I don't dislike ROA, but if you are wanting to purchase AENTITY, you will currently receive ROA for free. I purchased it first with the intent to then try AENTITY only to realize that it was unnecessary, so I got a refund for ROA. This is the main reason why I am not recommending purchasing ROA separately. Another issue is that ROA does not look good at 2160p. The motion blur over-pixelates and when this happens on white colours, it produces painfully distorted visuals on a large screen. AENTITY solves this with an "Easy" graphics setting which is far more detailed than what ROA can do. ROA also feels less exploratory than AENTITY. That said, what's impressive about ROA and the publisher, ARQUOIA, is that they were able to take this proof-of-concept and make AENTITY. I would love to see this concept taken even further, because I believe that the blur/delay/time effects truly have some amazing storytelling, gameplay, and artistic potential.

[i]Edit 6/21/2018: Sometimes when I write a review, the developer contacts me to request I play a bit more. Perhaps I missed something. I always try to honor this request because I certainly don't want to write ignorant reviews (note that this does not include when more content is added during EA campaigns).[/i] --- The developer of [i]ROA[/i] asked me to give it another shot. So I did. It only made my blood boil because while I found a few little things I hadn't before - it was just more of the same. You guys know I'm a huge advocate for the whole Itch.io scene and experimental games. This title is fine in that regard, but I just don't think it's worth three bucks. What else do you want me to say? The developer said to me, and I quote: [i]"You've forgotten us by now, haven't you? We thought you might want to edit your review of our experimental play. The current one does not go far enough. RŌA has a goal, even several, but the main goal is inaccessible to many, because it is an intrinsic, not an extrinsic one: to meditate on what happens on the screen, what happens to you when you do something, e.g. play. As someone with a great longing for Zen, you should be able to understand the goal. For the mind there is also a goal, because it needs an object of concentration, so that it goes in the background for a while: try to put all beings at rest. This also requires a great degree of awareness. It's supposed to support the other goal. Afterwards one can set the beings in motion again. This leads to another end and another achievement. Your current review assumes that there is no goal. This is simply factually wrong and undermines the reputation and focus of our studio that we are trying to build. And which we need to survive as a small indie studio. Just because one can't see something right away doesn't mean it's not there, like in the many kindergarden games out there that are supposed to give the modern slave a few seemingly free hours. Some things must have a more mental and philisophical substance to exist. A play does not have to forcefully spread out a wide ruleset and give fun like a medication. The medium is much bigger than that. ... At its ends - depending on what you focus on, resting or awakening - very relevant excerpts from the Dao De Jing appear. The lines that would be built up by stopping the figures prepare for it and indicate the number of the restless, purpose addicted minds. Please stick to what you said and reedit your short review so that it better fits the real purpose of the game. We'd be very grateful."[/i] My only response to this is that asking the player to 'meditate' about what is onscreen is a bit too abstract. One may go so far as to say it's a cop-out. Anyone could say that about virtually any program. [b]Yes, you can get the characters to stand up. And it's boring.[/b] [b]Also to be clear - I still found the whole thing nauseating.[/b] What I see with the developers comment above is someone who has a labor-of-love, and feels hurt by a negative review. I get that. I've been there. I simply cannot ethically tell my friends to go buy something that I personally think isn't worth it. [b]That's my value in the video game community. [/b] Again, what can I say. --- Original review below, for clarity. [b]I still completely stand by this review[/b]: [b]From my little time in [i]ROA[/i], I can't find any game at all.[/b] This is more like a piece of software created to give a very small visual experience. I found it all a bit nauseating and repetitive to be honest. I'm downvoting purely on the fact that while this could be a neat game, it is _nowhere_ near anything complete. A cool visual effect does not make a game; and it is very debatable if this is 'cool'. [b]I would be much more interested when/if the developers come up with a proper game.[/b]