Video Game / Röki

Röki is a 2020 Puzzle/Adventure Game developed by British studio Polygon Treehouse and published by United Label Games. A modernized version of the classic Point-and-Click Game genre, the game draws heavily from the legends and folktales of Scandinavia to tell a story of family, grief, love, and memory.

The game follows a young girl named Tove Jakobsen, who lives with little brother Lars and father Henrik. Her mother Eva passed away when Lars was just a baby, and the family has never been the same since, with Henrik still struggling with the grief of her passing and Tove having to look after Lars in her parents' place. Lars is very imaginative young soul, and he loves fairy tales, often telling Tove of seeing and speaking to the fairies and spirits who dwell in the forests around their tiny cottage.

One night, a giant black-furred beast attacks their home, destroying the house and seemingly killing Henrik. Tove and Lars flee deep into the woods, but the monster pursues and captures Lars. Tove follows Lars' trail and last sees her brother vanishing through a portal in a forest clearing, dragged through by the monster's massive claw. Determined to rescue her brother, Tove must find a way to reopen the portal. To this end, Tove learns that she must awaken the ancient Jötnar, the Guardians of the Seasons, who slumber deep in the enchanted woods. As she sets off on her quest, she encounters the magical denizens of the woods, from trolls to water spirits, while also discovering a mysterious blight corrupting the forest and her own memories of her mother's passing.

Tropes

• Affectionate Nickname: Tove often calls Lars, "Little Tomte".
• Alien Blood: Rorka bleeds black blood.
• All Myths Are True: The game's setting is one where pretty much one where this applies to Nordic folklore. Tove makes it quite clear from her reactions to meeting legendary beings like trolls and the Yule Cat that she's heard of them from her mother's stories. In fact, the game's very story is about the reality behind the legend of the Jötnar and Röki that we first hear as a bedtime story Tove tells Lars.
• All Trolls Are Different: Trolls here are a Dying Race giant humanoid Rock Monsters with long noses and pointed ears. Two troll sisters named Hilde and Hulde are encountered by Tove in her adventure, and one can also find the petrified statues of their brothers elsewhere in the game's world.
• All There in the Manual: Tove's last name being "Jakobsen" is only confirmed through outside material.
• Amphibian at Large: Mama Kroke, a giant toad-like water spirit who lives near the mill. She's looking for her three sons, and Tove needs to bring them back to her in exchange for one of her beard hairs (ingredients for creating an invisibility mask).
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Lars has shades of this towards Tove. While Tove obviously cares for him very deeply and will do anything for him, that doesn't stop Lars' imaginative and mischievous nature from sometimes getting on her nerves.
• Anti-Villain: Rorka. Her efforts to make her son human have resulted in the kidnappings and subsequent deaths of countless children, but she is driven by nothing but her maternal love for her son and desire to give him the life of happiness and without prejudice that he deserves.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: The Jötnar are the Guardians of the Seasons - Jötunúlfur for Spring, Jötunhjort for Summer, Jötunbjörn for Autumn, and Jötunravn for Winter.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The ultimate fate of the Jötnar. As final penance for their mistake of banishing Rorka and her son, along with their realization that the world no longer needs them, they decide to leave the world forever and go to the next realm.
• Attack of the Monster Appendage: Twice actually.
  • When Röki attacks Tove's home, his huge claw blocks a chunk of the home on two occasions, and Tove must find a way to force it to leave so she and Lars can escape.
  • After being captured by the Nokken, Tove must find different distractions to bypass the Nokken's tentacles, which are quick to grab her and move her back to her starting position if she doesn't successfully divert its attention.
• Become a Real Boy: Rorka's goal is to transform her son Röki into a human using the life force of an existing human child so that Röki will be accepted and have the happy life he deserves. Deconstructed, as both Rorka and Röki ultimately realize that said transformation will not truly give him happiness and what Röki instead deserves is to live his own life as himself.
• Betrayal by Offspring: In an act of rebellion, Röki undoes his mother's ritual to make him human in its final moments, reviving Lars and restoring Röki to his original, bestial form as a result of his friendship with Lars and his realization that what Rorka wants for him is not what he wants.
• Big Bad: Rorka, the human form of the Guardian of Winter. Her desire to help her son Röki become human is what ends up starting Tove's quest to rescue Lars, culminating in the game's climactic confrontation.
• Big Sister Instinct: The whole game is about Tove doing everything she can to rescue her brother from the clutches of a giant beast and its mother.
• Cast from Hit Points: Rorka's ritual for using Lars' life force to transform Röki into a human comes at the cost of not just Lars' life, but Rorka's own.
• Clever Crows: Much like Huginn and Muninn of Norse Mythology, Rorka's ravens act as her eyes and ears. She sends them out into the world as informants and return to her regularly with information about Tove's process.
• Combat Tentacles: The Nokken, the spirit of a drowned girl who appears as a huge octopus-like monster. She drags Tove into her underwater lair with her tentacles, and said appendages block Tove's efforts to escape the Nokken's cave.
• The Corruption: As Tove progresses through the forest, she discovers a fungal blight spreading around. Said Corruption also covers the sleeping Guardians. Ultimately revealed to be the work of Nattamare Parasites, embodying the Jötnar's regret for banishing Rorka.
• Creepy Crows: Ravens are everywhere in the game, serving as Rorka's spies and tormenting the Waytrees. Rorka's castle in Utangard is also full of black humanoid creatures with crow skulls for heads who shriek threats and warnings at Tove from their cages.
• Dark World: The final stage is set in such a realm. As Tove is transported to Utangard, she arrives at a parallel version of the castle in the lake, differentiated from the one in her own world by its more intense snowfall and the bird-like monsters inhabiting it. Notably, the player controls not just Tove in Utangard during this stage, but Henrik in the regular world. The two cannot interact with each other, but feel each other's presence and share the same inventory. While certain items might only exist in one realm or the other, any changes to the environment done by Henrik or Tove happen in both worlds and some objects or landscapes features can only be interacted with by one or the other. Thus, the player is required to regularly switch between control of Henrik and Tove to complete the level.
• Death by Childbirth: The final Nightmare Sequence reveals that Eva died giving birth to Lars while trapped in the forest in the dead of winter.
• Deuteragonist: After he is revealed to be still alive, Henrik takes on this role in the final stage. The player can switch between control of him and Tove to navigate Rorka's castle, with Henrik having his own small storyline.
• A Dog Named "Dog": The Jötnar's names are simply "Giant [Animal Species]" in Nordic.
  • Jötunbjörn - "Giant Bear."
  • Jötunhjort - "Giant Stag."
  • Jötunravn - "Giant Raven."
  • Jötunúlfur - "Giant Wolf."
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After many years of living in the shadow of her mother's passing and seeing her home slowly fall apart as a result, Tove finds herself seemingly torn from her family for good and encountering a centuries-repeated cycle of tragedy resulting from the errors of the Guardians. But after enduring many hardships and facing the painful memories of her past, Tove is not only able to help the Guardians see the error of their ways, but finally break the cycle of suffering, give Röki the happy life he truly deserves, and reunite with her family. In the final scene, we see that the family has moved on from their collective grief over Eva's death, with a brighter future ahead for them and a newfound friendship with the now-freed Röki.
• Environmental Narrative Game: The actual gameplay is not especially challenging (although some of the puzzles might need a bit of brain-racking) and it is impossible for the player to die or fail a level, with the game itself focusing more on the themes and narrative.
• Exorcist Head: To emphasize her supernatural nature, Rorka never actually turns around naturally. Instead, her head twists to the back of her neck before the rest of her body flips 180 degrees as well.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: The Waytrees are giant trees covered in eyeballs.
• Giant Flyer: Rorka is this in her true form of Jötunravn, an enormous raven and the Guardian of Winter.
• Giant Spider: Widow Drau, an enormous albino spider who haunts the caves under Jötunbjörn's place of slumber and terrorizes the local population of Cave Tomte.
• Girls with Moustaches: Mama Kroke has a large beard that she takes great pride in. Tove needs a snippet of it as an ingredient for making a magic mask.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Röki is the child of a male human woodcutter and the human form of Jötunravn, the female Guardian of Winter. Rather than a humanoid of any kind however, he appears as a giant beast, with Rorka being driven to find a way to give him a human form.
• House Fey: Tomtes, little gnome-like fellows, who will happily come out of their burrows and mouseholes help with housework when given an offering of porridge. Tove often affectionately refers to Lars as "little tomte", in the same way Eva did to her before Lars was born.
• I Know Your True Name: Tove uses this against the Nokken, this being the only way to let the drowned spirit rest in peace for good.
• Improbable Use of a Weapon: During her adventures in the woods, Tove manages to get a dagger from Hilde's shoulder, and later at Rorka's castle, she acquires an old spear. However, at no point are these weapons ever used to kill or injure anything; rather Tove uses them as makeshift tools to cut ropes, slash through vegetation, open crates, and the like.
• Invisible to Normals: The various magical denizens of the forest encountered by Tove over her journey are normally this. Lars is able to see them naturally, but Tove dismisses him as imaginative until she herself
• Invisibility: The invisibility mask that Tove crafts towards the end of the second act grants her this. She doesn't need it to sneak around enemies, but rather to access specific areas that are blocked off when she has it off.
• Last of Her Kind: Troll sisters Hilde and Hulde are the only remaining trolls in the forest, the rest of their kind having perished long ago.
• The Lost Woods: The setting for most of the game. The snowy woods around Tove and Lars' home are full of magical creatures that can only be seen by people with specific powers; while Lars can see them normally due to being born in the forest, Tove is only able to see them as a result of her encounter with the portal.
• Magic Wand: After freeing an Älva trapped under an overgrown mushroom, Tove is given its wand in gratitude. She needs this to change the sizes of certain objects, allowing her to create platforms or take existing platforms and move them elsewhere.
• Making a Splash: Giving Hilde's flute to the Fossegrim allows him to enchant the instrument to control water, which in turn will prove quite helpful for Tove if she is to navigate the Nokken's lair.
• The Marvelous Deer: Jötunhjort, Guardian of Summer, appears as a gigantic stag, and he is indeed very impressive.
• Mask of Power: Towards the end of the second act, Tove crafts two of these to free Jötunhjort, one that makes her invisible and the other allows her to See the Invisible, both of which are needed to access certain areas.
• Mega Neko: Jólakötturinn, the Yule Cat, a giant man-eating feline whom Tove finds in his lair in the woods. His fur's going gray in his old age, and he asks Tove find him some black dye for his fur to restore his fierce appearance.
• Missing Mom: Tove and Lars' mother, Eva, died when Lars was a baby, and her death's impact on Henrik and the children is a hugely important part of the game's story.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: The Nokken and her multitude of tentacles prove quite the threat to Tove in her quest to escape, and later retrieve the Wolf Staff from, its lair. Averted with her "brother", the Fossegrim, who uses his many arms to play with instruments.
• Mushroom Man: The Shroomi. He's Invisible to Normals, but once Tove crafts the revealing mask, she's able to see him.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • For years, Tove blamed herself for her mother's death, going as far as to blot out the memories from her own mind. And while she no longer remembers the full story as a result of her denial, she is nonetheless driven to care for and protect Lars for her mother's sake.
  • Revealed to be the case with the Jötnar as well. Jötunhjort admits to Tove that he deeply regrets banishing Rorka and her son, even stating that he chose to do nothing about the Nattamare Parasites because he saw them as proper penance for what he and his fellow Guardians did. Ultimately, he and the other Guardians return to apologize to Rorka before leaving the world with her for good.
• Nature Spirit: The game is naturally (pun not intended) full of these, with the mightiest being the four Jötnar, who are the guardians and personifications of the four seasons.
• Nightmare Sequence: The game has a total of four of these, each one related to Tove's memories of her mother and her death.
• Noble Wolf: Jötunúlfur, the Guardian of Spring, is an enormous wolf with a fierce and courageous personality. It's hard not to be awed by the sight of her slumbering on a mountain peak when Tove enters her shrine.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Rorka says this to Tove in their climactic confrontation regarding how both of them are motivated by their love for the young boy they have under their guardianship - Tove with her determination to protect Lars and Rorka with her goal of helping Röki become human so he can have the life he deserves.
• Our Fairies Are Different: While nominally based on depictions of elves in Icelandic folklore, the Älva who inhabit the area around Jötunhjort's place of slumber resemble pixies of sorts and live quite similarly. They even have little magic wands.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: The Jötnar (derived from the Norse word for "giant") are gigantic nature spirits in the form of wild beasts who embody the four seasons.
• Our Gnomes Are Weirder: Tomte are House Fey resembling Waddling Heads with big pointy hats and large beards that make them reminiscent classic garden gnomes. They help with chores around houses, but Tove also encounters Cave Tomte, whose hats are equipped with mining lights and who behave more like folkloric gnomes or dwarves.
• Parents as People:
  • Henrik genuinely does love and care for Tove and Lars, and we see in Tove's memories, that he spent a lot of time bonding with her and showering her with parental affection; he even goes out to rescue the children after he is revealed to have survived. However, his grief and consequent depression over Eva's death results in him spending very little time looking after the children and instead sleeping away his days, essentially forcing Tove to take a Promotion to Parent, which Henrik even laments when he sets out to rescue his children.
  • Rorka's love and devotion to Röki is what drives the game's plot. While her ultimate goal is nothing less than giving her son a happy life free from the hatred and fear the Guardians showed him, it is also what leads to her monstrous actions that result in the deaths of far too many human children over many centuries. However, Röki does not share his mother's interest in becoming human, and Rorka is eventually forced to realize that the life she wants to give Röki is not necessarily the one that will make him happy.
• Parting the Sea: Well, not so much "sea" as underwater cave, but the effect is much the same, thanks to an enchanted flute given to Tove by the Fossegrim.
• Pokémon Speak: Most tomtes encountered by Tove are only able to say "Tomte".
• Promotion to Parent: Tove essentially acts as Lars' mother with Eva's passing, as a result of Henrik's grief leaving him barely able to look after the children.
• Secondary Character Title: The main character's name is Tove. Röki is the giant beast that captures Lars at the start of the game, and Rorka's desire to make him human is what drives the story's central conflict.
• See the Invisible: The revealing mask does this. Not only will it allow Tove to see Shroomi, but also the Älva and their homes, which she'll need to acquire certain items and reach specific areas.
• Sleep Paralysis Creature: The Nattamare Parasites that torment the slumbering Guardians, implied to be personifications of their regret for banishing Rorka and in turn spreading The Corruption that threatens the forest. Tove making contact with them is what results in the story's Nightmare Sequences.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Tove looks very much like a younger version of her mother.
• To Serve Man: Both the Yule Cat and the troll sisters often casually discuss eating people or making recipes from human ingredients. While they assure Tove that they will not eat her, it doesn't exactly do much to assuage her fears.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Henrik loves his pickled herrings, especially in sandwich form.
• Was Once a Man: It's heavily implied that the crow skull-headed monsters around Rorka's castle are transformed humans.
• Weakened by the Light: Widow Drau is unable to abide bright light, and Tove has to escape from her clutches by using mirrors and giant diamonds to blind her with beams of light from the Cave Tomte's mines.
• World Tree: The Waytrees, clearly inspired by Yggdrasil, are huge sapient trees covered in eyes who function as portals to different regions of the game's world.