Last week I saw several of my peers talking about and Roger, a short game for PC and Switch that calls itself an “interactive novel.” It took me about an hour to play and costs just a few bucks, and it’s practically impossible to talk about it without thoroughly spoiling it, but I’m glad I checked it out.
As the game’s description explains, and Roger starts with a young girl named Sofia waking up to find a strange man in her house where her dad is supposed to be. It’s upsetting and creepy, though the eventual explanation you get radically changes the experience. The game’s simple art, pastel colors, and jaunty soundtrack offset this tone, making everything feel disorienting.
Most of and Roger’s gameplay is minigames, none of them particularly well-explained. As an example, in the early game Sofia brushes her teeth; you’re given several unexplained buttons to click, and you have to fumblingly parse out how to turn on the water, get toothpaste on your toothbrush, and actually brush. Trying to open a door involves choosing the right buttons from an onslaught of dots, and trying to dial a phone involves guessing at and then memorizing button presses. Later minigames involve tracing patterns or lines, some of which you can’t see at first.
As they’re clearly meant to, many of these minigames feel confusing and frustrating, though never enough to make the game itself feel that way. This is all meant to put you in Sofia’s shoes, outmatched by the tasks before her. It’s an evocative way to portray her distress, especially once the game’s real subject matter becomes clear.
I do want to touch on what that subject matter is, so stop reading here if you want to just go play the game for yourself. If you want to check it out but feel the need to be more prepared, I’ll say that there’s no kidnapping or child abuse in the game, as the setup and opening might seem to suggest.
SPOILERS FOLLOW.
It comes out later in the game that Sofia is actually an older woman suffering from dementia, and the game’s opening chapter is her experience of an encounter with her husband, Roger, who’s taking care of her. With this reveal, and Roger’s mechanics take on a new tone; they reflect the confusion Sofia feels as daily tasks become more challenging. From its dark beginning, the game becomes a more gentle and moving exploration of what it’s like to care for a declining loved one.
I found this hard subject matter to sit with: though I worked with caregivers for loved ones with dementia in a past career, it’s something I feel acutely anxious about as my parents age. Despite having professionally counselled others through it, my fear about the challenges and intimacy that will be required of me with my own family sometimes overwhelms me. (I watched about ten minutes of the movie All Of Us Strangers a few months ago, realized it was about parents, and promptly turned it off.)
There aren’t many narratives about cognitive decline from the point of view of the people experiencing them. Some of this is for obvious reasons, but I think it’s also just that it’s a hard thing to consider. I admired and Roger’s effort to really look at it, and to use game mechanics to try to portray what the experience might be like. The game doesn’t shy away from the hard parts–we see Roger struggle, and he admits to a few occasions when he physically lashed out at Sofia–but it also doesn’t portray the whole thing as a tragedy or Sofia as a burden. It’s a nuanced take for such a short game. I appreciated my time with it, even when it was tough.
