Roki is an adventure game that follows Tove, a young girl traveling through fairytale lands searching for her younger brother, Lars. Through Tove's journey, she will meet fascinating characters, solve complex puzzles, and even fight off formidable foes looking to stop her in her tracks.
As with most adventure games, Roki's puzzles are creative and offer a severe challenge, making it easy to get stuck or even lost in its dense world entirely. However, there are ways to help yourself avoid the general pitfalls that naturally come with the genre, allowing you to progress further into the emotionally rich story of Roki.
Exploration Is Key
Adventure games are primarily about roaming around an ample, dense space and solving puzzles to reach the next point of progression. Roki isn't any different and remains true to the genre and formula. However, with that said, Roki fascinatingly handles its world, which encourages exploration, back travel, and experimentation.
There will be many branching paths that can lead to an item you need, a new NPC that can clue you into what you need to do, or even a whole new area that will lead you to the next story beat or dungeon. Going off the beaten path in Roki is more than encouraged and is a fundamental part of its design. So, if you ever feel lost, you may very well be playing into the game's hand.
Consult Your Journal
When in doubt, crack open Tove's journal and browse through some of the tabs. You will find the area's map layout and personal notes jotted down by Tove that can help nudge you in the right direction. Although sometimes, the notes won't clue you in as much as we'd like them to, they're still helpful in some situations.
The map specifically will show you every branching path and possible location in each chapter, allowing you to look for exits or puzzles that may lead you there. If you're stuck or lost, open the map and look for areas you can potentially go to, you may be missing a path or puzzle that you walked past earlier!
Talk To The NPCs
You will stumble upon many characters who are more than willing to help you out by pointing you in the right direction. If you are having trouble progressing past a specific area, talk to the NPCs available, they will often drop hints of what you're supposed to do and may even tell you what they need you to do to progress forward.
Additionally, make sure you exhaust every NPCs dialogue as that's a certain way to get a complete understanding of the context for your current objective. The characters spread around Roki's world are more than just fodder for the story and can help you out tremendously.
Constantly Flash Interactables
One feature in Roki that can easily get overlooked is the "Flash Interactables" command that will highlight everything Tove can interact with in the area. This feature makes finding items, hidden pathways, and even puzzles a breeze.
If you are ever stuck, try using this feature in every area you can, it will likely reveal things you've been walking past the entire time without realizing it. Remember, Roki is a tried and true addition to the adventure genre. Getting lost and wracking your brain over puzzles is bound to happen a few times.
Try Combining Items
There will be several points throughout Roki where you might have tons of items in your inventory, taunting you anytime you pull it up. The sheer volume of objects you have can be pretty daunting at times, even more so if you have no clue if any of them combine with each other.
However, Roki will never allow you to combine items that aren't compatible, and you are never at risk of losing a critical item that is essential to move forward. In fact, trying to combine items that aren't meant to go together will often have Tove comment on it with a tiny hint or suggest what might work instead.
Use Items On Interactables
As mentioned above, using the "Flash Interactables" feature is an excellent way to see if you have anything left to do in a specific room or location. However, something may light up that you can interact with but might assume you can't at the moment.
This mistake can happen in just about every adventure game, including Roki. If you see a door, object, or even NPC light up via the "Flash Interactables" feature, try putting using items from your inventory on it. You would be surprised how many times that may be the solution you were looking for, especially if you make a new item with the step above.