Rochard, is the tale of John Rochard, a space miner who travels from asteroid to asteroid, mining ore. John takes his job very seriously as he is in charge of the operation and unfortunately things haven't been going too well lately for his crew as they've been coming up empty.
Luckily for them, a mysterious glowing rock is found but unfortunately, while trying to investigate, a group of space pirates shows up. The ore, is not just ore, underneath it houses a temple that could show some hints on alien life. Your job is pretty much to work it all out.
The tools that John are able to use are his trusty G-Lifter and Rock Blaster. The G-Lifter is a gun that controls the gravity of objects. These objects can be thrown and carried in the fight against the pirates. John also has the ability to control the gravity in an entire room my creating a low gravity area. The Rock Blaster has the ability to shoot a laser beam that fries objects and blow up doors. Using these items in combination to solve puzzles and defeat enemies can be very rewarding.
Rochard plays like a very well developed 2D platformer. Each room has a puzzle and enemies, and it never becomes boring. While there aren't many differences between space pirates, there are different challenges that are set up to aid the space pirates. Throughout the game, force fields start show up and must be activated or deactivated. Turrets also appear, but they only target John (the same is true for the electric traps on floor panels). While there are no boss fights in the game, the level challenges more than enough make up for it.
The game's controls are very responsive and solid. The character moves with the right stick and the gun is operated with the left stick. Firing and controlling gravity are the shoulder buttons. The developers have created a very clever tutorial at the beginning of the game, but it does not feel like a tutorial due to it blending in with the story so well.
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