And Roger

One of the most wonderful parts about video games as a creative medium is how it can be more than simply entertainment. We often get so wrapped up in intricate gameplay, stunning graphics and art direction, smooth and fluid performance and technical prowess that we can forget that video games are designed to tell a story, and sometimes those stories can be important, heart-breaking, and emotionally complex. That's certainly the case for TearyHand Studio's And Roger.

This is a very succinct but massively impactful game that explores a woman's struggles with dementia. It's a tale that is presented from the eyes of this suffering woman, seeing as she grapples to retain control over her life, all as her memories become jumbled and fragmented, distorted beyond belief. We get to experience her life through different phases all mashed together into a confusing melange, where she confuses her childhood and her father with that of later periods of her life and how her husband fits into this equation. This is where the name of 'And Roger' comes into play, as it refers to an unfamiliar man who imposes himself into her life and yet who is, in reality, the man she fell in love with but cannot quite picture correctly anymore.

We get to experience all of these confusing and clashing moments, witnessing how the protagonist, Sofia, fights to retain control of her memory all while different pieces, moments, places, and people fade in and out in sequences that only infrequently make coherent sense. It's a really raw and difficult situation to be put in, to experience such a brutal illness as it consumes someone in real-time, and yet And Roger doesn't stop there, as it also somewhat provides a glimpse into how Roger adapts to Sofia's decline.

From his own wife of many, many years no longer recognising him to guilty admissions about how he treated her during moments of weakness, the narrative as a whole - from both Sofia's first-person perspective and Roger's recounted tales and emotional outbursts - we get a glimpse into the impact of dementia on a household in a way few other creative projects successfully manage to do so.

So again, it's raw and honest, truly complex and challenging to stomach at times, perhaps more so because of the interactivity offered in this video game format. And Roger may be a visual novel, but it delivers a multitude of mini-game-like activities to overcome. There are jigsaw-type tasks that are more on-the-nose in regards to piecing a memory back together and seeing the colour and life return to a key moment in Sofia's life, as well as memory challenges where you have to remember wedding vows in order, bits and pieces that depict the wonder of Sofia and Roger's time to together. But there are also dark and overwhelming tasks too, be it scrambling to open a locked door and escaping from an unrecognisable, faceless persona or just trying to claw together basic parts of a wider memory to understand the whole. A lot of this is offered by simply clicking a single button or manipulating a cursor, so we're talking about very basic gameplay design, but you do always feel as though you're lacking control and that something, somewhere is preventing you from being the person you think you should be. As simple as it may be, TearyHand uses gameplay to further sell its narrative vision in an incredibly effective manner.

And Roger isn't a complex game nor a long one, in fact, from a gameplay perspective it's rather succinct and basic. But what TearyHand Studio has also cooked up with this game is a hugely impactful and emotionally-complex story that will leave an impression far longer than the approximate one-hour runtime. It's not always easy to reach the credits of this game but I'd still recommend every player to give And Roger a try, as for such a compact and affordable title, you get a lot in return from a sentimental and poignant experience perspective.