A Fairytale at the World’s End
Alice. Dorothy. Wendy. We all know their stories—girls who found themselves stranded in mysterious lands, surrounded by fantastical characters, hoping against all odds to make it back home in one piece. With Rocco’s Island: Pocket Edition, indie developer Cogoo adds an emotionally poignant entry to this pantheon of lost girls.
Keys to the Kingdom
Rocco’s Island opens with an instructional video left by Evelyn’s ancestor and the founder of island Mk.17, Liz Goralini. In 2021, Liz created the island as a failsafe for when the world inevitably faced cataclysm. She harnessed the powers of science and magic, transforming the Four Elements (Earth, Air, Water and Fire) into kings and queens. Liz then tasked these now immortal beings to watch over the island and, when the need arose, work with Rocco, the island’s keeper, to rebuild the world. The video abruptly ends, and the player is introduced to Evelyn, who has washed ashore on the island.
After regaining her faculties, Evelyn stands, and the player is prompted to tap her belongings scattered along the beach. After gathering her things and making your way up the Oz-like path, a large iron bell stands before you. Once you tap the bell, a cutscene reveals an inscription etched onto the surface of the bell that reads, ‘Ring To End The Pain.’ Flashes of Evelyn’s painful past come rushing back, and Evelyn, of course, rings the bell.
As the bell tolls and the ground trembles, a gasp comes from behind Evelyn, revealing Eva, a young girl who looks suspiciously like our protagonist. Eva chastises Evelyn and explains that she’s rung the Bells of Kataclysm, meaning that island is now in self-destruct mode. To stop the world from ending, they must traverse the island, collecting keys from the Four Elemental rulers, who have abandoned their subjects and retreated to their castles. Naturally, Evelyn has lost her ability to speak, so Eva must join her in her quest to retrieve the keys, awaken Rocco and save the world.
You Rang
Rocco’s Island excels as a hybrid point-and-click adventure game interspersed with various puzzle games. Gameplay requires you to tap around the island’s winding paths and interact with objects and characters. Along the way, you can discover hidden collectibles that serve no particular purpose but are fun to uncover nonetheless. Players receive 35 tolls (lives) in which to complete their journey.
The Doomsday Timer, represented by a bell icon in the upper left of the screen, displays how many tolls remain. Each time you fail at a puzzle, you’ll lose a toll. I finished the game with around 20 tolls remaining; however, the ticker looming in my periphery infused the game with a constant sense of dread.
Rocco’s Island treats players to a generous free trial—the first quarter of the game. That level of generosity feels unheard of for a premium game, at least in my experience. For the full version, a justifiable $4.99 price tag awaits.
Puzzling About
Rocco’s Island employs four types of puzzle games. Spires, which appear as towering crystalline obelisks, serve as the most common obstacle. Each spire contains a match-3 style puzzle with specific objectives displayed in the screen’s upper left corner. Further complicating the matter, each puzzle only allows a set number of moves to complete it. Should you fail at solving the puzzle, you’ll lose one toll from the Timer.
Additionally, the last completed spire rematerializes, meaning you’ll have to solve it again in order to revisit the prior area. Luckily, you’ll find power-up orbs at altars along the paths. You can also earn orbs by solving Goralini vaults in each of the Elemental’s kingdoms. Goralini vaults feature a 2048-style puzzle in which players combine numbered tiles by shifting them to add up to a required total, usually 128 or 256.
Shrines and Goralini vaults aren’t the only barriers you’ll face. Characters also block your path, requiring that you answer a riddle before passing. These riddles are usually pretty easy and give a nice moment of character development. I enjoyed the quirky, if not slightly creepy, cast of characters and the moments of levity they added to the game. These characters also reward the player with an object important to their sullen Elemental monarchs in hopes of restoring them to their former glory. However, after gathering these objects and clearing the way of spires, players must face a final challenge—shadow games.
Shadow games require players to rotate statue pieces while standing on the correct tile. Their shadows form a completed picture when the light shines on the correctly positioned pieces. After solving the puzzle, a shadowy cutscene reveals the Elemental’s past. A tougher version of the match-3 puzzle game appears, and upon solving, the Elemental’s restoration.
Curiouser and Curiouser
Rocco’s Island had me hooked from the first spire. The game does an excellent job of keeping players rapt in its colorfully illustrative and atmospheric world. It also creates tension by juxtaposing the vibrant fantasy land against the darkness of the looming apocalypse and Evelyn’s personal trauma. I also thoroughly enjoyed the strange mix of creatures I encountered along my journey, including a demon, the skeleton of the first space dog, several fish and the goddess Nike.
It seems like it shouldn’t work, but somehow, it does. I believed this world was home to these disparate critters, and I needed to know how their stories ended. However, with all this magic, I couldn’t help but wonder—where was the science? Players sharing in my quandary need only wait until the game’s final chapters to discover where this part of Goralini’s work enters the picture.
Towards the end of the game, as the puzzles became harder and the tolls rang quicker, I began to wonder if I’d run out of time to save these beloved denizens. Yet, in true fairytale fashion, they all lived happily ever after.
