Roia is a game about helping a stream of water to reach the sea.
Gravity is doing most of the work for you, of course, leaving you (mostly) free to enjoy the game’s lush aesthetic and contemplate whatever it is that makes you happy.
If you’ve played any of Emoak’s previous indie titles, such as Paper Climb, Machinaero, and the award-winning Lyxo, you’ll already know what the studio is all about.
Like those games, Roia is a highly innovative demonstration of the power video games have to quietly enhance your mood with simple tasks and beautiful presentation.
You can get a good sense of what you’re in for by reading the game’s press release. It reveals that one of its main designers, Tobias Sturn, spent many happy days during his childhood playing in a creek behind his grandparents’ house.
Accompanied by his grandfather, a gifted woodworker, Sturn would test the flow of the creek with dams, water wheels, bridges, and other homemade contraptions, endlessly fascinated by the way that water flows, merges, and gently carves channels through solid rock.
While Sturn and his colleagues were making Roia, Sturn’s grandfather sadly passed away. His legacy is clear to see in the finished game.
Roia is a unique and visually stunning game that takes you through a series of handcrafted environments as you help your little stream reach its final destination.
After descending a mountain you’ll cross forests, meadows, and seaside towns, all the while nudging the landscape and avoiding obstacles to create a path for the stream to follow, accompanied throughout by a helpful white bird.
All of these visual elements are rendered in an elegant, spare style, and the game’s aesthetic is rounded out by a beautiful score from Lyxo soundtrack composer Johannes Johannson.
If Roia sounds like your sort of thing, you can pick it up for $2.99 right now on the App Store and the Google Play Store.