Journey of a Roach

Journey of a Roach is a point and click adventure game developed by Kobold Games, a small and young development studio based in Switzerland, and published by Daedalic Entertainment.

In a far future, after a nuclear war, humanity has seized to exist, however, the planet isn’t lifeless. In this radiation ridden environment huge mutated insects have taken over and started rebuilding society, making for a very interesting world.

The game follows the story of two cockroach buddies, Jim and Bud, who live in an old bomb shelter built by humans before their extinction. You take control of Jim, a smart but somewhat naïve roach, in his adventure to find a flower that his friend Bud spotted while digging around the wasteland. Being the klutz that he is, Bud keeps getting himself in bigger and bigger troubles and, as his best friend, you’ll have to save him.

Graphically, the game’s art style resembles a comic book with cutscenes being hand-drawn, two-dimensional art, while the game is rendered in three dimensions, with the camera fixed to the side. The design of the characters is the best feature of the game, and the developers have created some really interesting adaptations of modern time stereotypes. Throughout the entirety of the game you’ll come across a spider lady whom acts like a crazy cat lady (with the equivalent of cats being flies), an oppressive militarized ant faction that rules with an iron fist over the other insects and much more.

With a premise as interesting as this you’d think the game would do a better job of exploring all the crazy possibilities that a world like this offers, but instead the game plays it too safe, limiting you to a few interconnected human-looking rooms. It also doesn’t help that the game is extremely short and will take about 3 hours to beat, less than that if you decide to replay it with the game even having an achievement for beating it in less than 18 MINUTES.

The puzzles are pretty straight forward, neither easy nor too hard, but still rewarding to solve. Most of the time you’ll have to get from point A to point B by solving a series of puzzles unlocking the next room. The main addition of the game, when it comes to mechanics, is the movement of your main character. Being a roach you can climb on walls and ceilings pretty easily with most puzzles requiring you to do so. The puzzles vary from catching flies using different contraptions, to disguising yourself as an ant and going as far as launching a ballistic missile.

In the end the developers have done a great job creating a really unique, interesting and humorous world, but it seems they failed to explore the full potential of it.  The title feels like it ran out of resources and it leaves you with a feeling of unfinished, desiring more from this interesting world. Adding to this, the asking price of $14.99/ €14.99/ £11.99, the title feels really overpriced. If you’re looking for a “meatier” point and click adventure  with a bit more than just a few hours of entertainment this isn’t the title for you. Here’s to hoping we’ll get a sequel that covers a lot more of this unique world.

Cirstoiu Alexandru, NoobFeed