Rose And Locket Review

Finally getting to play Rose and Locket from front to back was a surreal experience. I first played the action platformer from New Zealand developer Whistling Wizard back at PAX Aus 2023, before I promptly hunted down everyone I knew at the event and forced them to play it too. First impressions are important, so the fact I couldn’t stop blabbering on about the game’s gorgeous visuals and comic book aesthetic probably means it made a good one. Three years later, with the finished article in hand, I’m ready to see if Rose and Locket can make good on that incredible first impression.  

Expecting the birth of her daughter, outlaw Rose decided to hang up the holster and leave her life of crime and violence behind, wanting more for her child. Things were going well for the one-time crook, right up until they weren’t. With her young daughter’s soul trapped in a locket, the former gunslinger is called back into action by the scheming spirit Envy, tasked to hunt down the other six deadly sins.

The mysterious deeds that lead Rose to this bounty hunt are slowly made clear across the game’s roughly two-hour campaign, wherein the reluctant gun for hire crosses paths with all manner of evil, including the aforementioned sins. The tale of betrayal, repentance, and love is told beautifully through stunning comic panels and some truly excellent voice work that sells the emotion of every character.

This supernatural setting is further brought to life by Rose and Locket’s stupendously slick visual style and framing. Each stage looks and feels like a thoughtfully illustrated comic panel, full of vibrant colour and striking design. Rose’s journey looks just as good in motion as well. Many frames are cut exactly as a comic would be, with Rose walking out of one frame only to appear in another elsewhere on the screen. This design choice may, at times, result in some gameplay confusion, but it truly cements the game’s already wonderful aesthetic.

You’ll become acquainted with this design decision right alongside the game’s primary mechanics during the tutorial. Alongside the jump, dash, and double jump you would expect to see in any platformer, Rose is packing more than a few damage-dealing options. Rose begins her quest to save her daughter, rocking a six-shooter and a stick of dynamite, with her arsenal expanding as the journey moves forward. Ammunition is endless, but you’ll have to wait for a cooldown to expire once you’ve emptied your clip, so switching to another firearm is often the best course of action.

By the game’s end, Rose will have access to a shotgun and a lever-action rifle to round out her arsenal. Aiming and firing is an easy, twin-stick affair, with each of the three boomsticks feeling unique thanks to some quality feedback. The revolver is trusty, and the rifle is a satisfying long-range option, but I found the shotgun to have a far smaller use case, particularly with its limited range and punishing recoil that can send you careening off small ledges.

Each gun has an alternate fire that can be unleashed to devastate your enemies, but you’ll have to charge it first. Doing so requires Rose to collect green sprites dotted throughout each level, often tempting you to deviate from your path or put yourself in more peril to collect it. The reward is often worth the risk, as these attacks are visually impressive and deal significantly more damage.

Enemies range from slugs, skeletal heads, and flaming totems to quickdraw corpses and ghouls that treat solid walls like a suggestion. The variety keeps things interesting, and no one type of foe garners frustration, but it’s the distribution of these baddies that could do with some work. Tighter spaces that require precision platforming would often be swamped by flying adversaries and ground crawlers that would upset the balance of the section. Worse still, enemies tend to spawn directly in Rose’s space, causing damage as they blink into existence.

Combat is generally at its best when Rose is confronting one of her bounty targets. Each boss fight against a sin is a multistage visual spectacle that often diverges from the well-worn gameplay path as well. Trading in her walking boots, Rose can be found riding a flaming casket, galloping towards a runaway train atop a steed, or plummeting from the sky, all while taking it to a huge, monstrous boss. While they aren’t all perfect, with more than one having at least a single unbalanced phase, these encounters are generally a blast.

Overall, I enjoyed blasting malevolent spirits back to hell and jumping and dashing through the various realms the sins occupied, but the strong focus on visual design does come at a cost. As each panel is self-contained, the game is littered with brief but disruptive load screens. Now I do mean brief. Each hint-offering load screen only hangs around for a few seconds at most, but it’s the frequency of them that eventually wore thin. I find it hard to say that I’d trade away some of the transitions for reduced downtime, as the aesthetic is truly top tier, but interrupting my flow that often really does take a toll.

Final Thoughts

I can’t stress enough how strong an identity Rose and Locket has. The comic book styling and fantastic designs, filled with colour and life, sell this Western fantasy world in a way that few other indies could hope to. Gunplay and platforming could be a little tighter, and the level layout and enemy placement need retooling, but I still enjoyed clicking around in spurs, feeding lead to any ghoul in my way. Above all else, this is an impressive, artistic first outing for developer Whistling Wizard, and I look forward to seeing where they go next.