Rosewater Review – A road trip adventure with meaningful choices and oodles of heart

The genre of point & click adventure games is about as old as time itself, which is why I can always appreciate the various ways it manages to occasionally reinvent itself. Rosewater is one such example: while its fundamentals remain wholly traditional and sufficiently point-and-clicky, its true charm lies in the fact that, much like developer Grundislav Games’ previous title, Lamplight City, the game gives its players choices with actual consequences. It’s also a fun, Western-themed Adventure with a capital A that manages to endear its characters to the player in a way that makes the game’s shortcomings sting a bit less. But more on that later.

The road beckons

Rosewater, unsurprisingly, begins in the titular town of Rosewater as boxer-turned-writer Harley Leger arrives by train to try and find employment at the local newspaper. She gets her first assignment – interviewing a frontier hero –, but then one thing leads to another and she suddenly finds herself en route to the other end of the continent in search of a missing professor’s supposedly sizable fortune. Riding your steampunk wagon across Western Vespuccia, you’ll meet countless new faces – some friendly, others not so much – and get embroiled in all sorts of situations as you embark on what is essentially a 19th century road trip set in the same alternate history world as the aforementioned Lamplight City.

Now, adventure games can live or die by their characters, which is why I’m pleased to report that Rosewater does pretty well in this category – in fact, it is the life blood of the whole game. The group you assemble for your grand journey across the frontier is a colorful bunch with vastly different temperaments, backstories and personalities, and I’m sure most players will eventually find and gravitate towards their favorites. I found it fairly easy to warm up to them, and thanks to how lengthy the adventure is, the game gives every character plenty of time to breathe. By the time I hit the credits, they genuinely felt like “my people” and I was sad to see them go as the game came to a close.

A branching adventure

Rosewater is the kind of adventure where it’s the journey that matters, not necessarily the destination. The game’s uniquely branching structure appears to also support this idea: there are plenty of dialogue choices, along with alternate solutions to puzzles, most of which seem to matter very much, as they can alter the narrative, unlock optional scenes and make events play out in different ways. I even did some research to see how other players fared, and sure enough, I ended up with some wildly different outcomes compared to others, to say nothing of the various scenes and events that simply never happened during my own playthrough. Rosewater most certainly feels like a game that’s meant to be played more than once, which is potentially a pretty big ask, as the adventure is a fairly chunky one (my first run lasted me a good 20 hours), but if you wish to see everything Harley’s journey has to offer, I think it’s very much worth it.

Structurally, Rosewater resembles an episodic TV show, which I personally enjoyed a great deal. Like I’ve implied above: the destination is sort of secondary, and it’s the trials and tribulations of your journey that get the limelight for the most part. As Harley and company travel across the desert, they repeatedly stop (or are made to stop) at various locations for a wide variety of reasons, which then leads into these self-contained little episodes where our heroes meet a new set of characters and engage with their problems before ultimately moving on. It has a bit of a “mystery of the week” vibe, even if the mysteries themselves are fairly down-to-earth for the most part and don’t really lead to life-or-death situations; that said, it was nonetheless entertaining to witness how the countless curiosities of the open road gradually turned the game’s unlikely travel companions into good friends.

The not-so-rosy bits

Unlike Lamplight City, Rosewater doesn’t hinge quite as heavily on doing detective work as Grundislav’s previous outing. Granted, there will be a few occasions where you’ll need to investigate your surroundings and deduce solutions based on what you find (especially towards the end), but for the most part, this isn’t the kind of game where you’ll spend hours trying to figure out a specific puzzle. The areas you can explore at a given time are also relatively limited, so it’s pretty easy to pick up the necessary key items and figure out what you need to do with them – with some exceptions, things are usually handed to you on a silver platter, and I only found myself getting stuck maybe once during the entire adventure. What’s more, there’s also a separate hotkey for highlighting interactable objects, which just makes your job that much easier.

As for the plot, while it does raise the stakes in the finale and there is at least one unexpected twist that I did not see coming, I also wouldn’t call the overall narrative particularly earth-shattering. Instead, it’s the self-contained mini-episodes mentioned earlier that make up the bulk of the adventure, and these can range from peculiar to wholesome – on one occasion, I was helping a troupe of traveling actors polish up their play; on another, I was aiding a troubled hermit overcome the demons of his past. The list could go on. What I’m trying to say is that if you’re expecting a barrage of nail-biting murder mysteries and revelations that will shock you to your very core, you won’t find it here. Rosewater is more akin to an anthology piece offering brief peeks into the lives of its world’s diverse inhabitants – some will undoubtedly enjoy the charming mundaneness of it all, while others will likely crave a bit more excitement and derring-do.

Closing thoughts

I think the best way to describe Rosewater is to use the game’s very own words: it’s a tale of adventure and camaraderie on the western frontier. It’s a Wild West road trip that has absolutely no intention of rushing to the finish line: roughly 20 hours in length, the game places a heavy emphasis on taking the time to stop and smell the roses. As a collection of self-contained tales reminiscent of an episodic TV show, Rosewater introduces players to the diverse faces of Western Vespuccia, allowing them to grow attached to a small group of heroes as they tackle the many curious aspects of the open road together. There are things to miss, and depending on their decisions and dialogue choices, not every player will have the exact same experience, making repeat playthroughs potentially worthwhile – although not mandatory, as a single run can be just as satisfying on its own.

RosewaterPlatform: Windows, Linux, macOSGenre: AdventureDeveloper: Grundislav GamesPublisher: Application Systems HeidelbergRelease: 03/27/2025

I wouldn’t say it’s a game for everyone, though: the Wild West setting will certainly not be to every gamer’s liking, and the narrative’s insistence on focusing on a series of relatively mundane side-stories instead of developing a thrilling overarching plot could similarly divide audiences. Things do get more intense in the final hour or two, but by then, it’s a bit too late. Puzzles are also on the easy side, generally requiring you to simply talk to everyone and inspect everything in sight – if there’s some kind of an obstacle, the item needed to overcome it is usually close by.

Overall, if you’re in the mood for a slower, more relaxed and character-centric adventure where choices do actually matter, Rosewater is sure to please – just don’t expect it to be a nonstop thrill ride with constant shootouts, daring escapes or unexpected twists and turns. It’s not that kind of Western.