A Rock's Tale

There’s a subgenre of Japanese portal fantasy/isekai in which the main character finds themself in a fantasy world transformed into some sort of non-human being. This started out reasonably enough with monsters and animals, but in the endless pursuit of novelty in a rather crowded genre, somewhere along the way it got weird, and now we have series like Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon (no, I’m not making this up). The focus is often on how the MC circumvents their limitations or even manages to turn them around into advantages, inevitably becoming super powerful and probably impressing some cute girls.

This tale of waking up in a fantasy world as a rock seems like it would fit right in—except that instead of unlikely power-leveling, you solve everyone’s problems with plain old social skills. (It is possible that the PC being a rock makes people more likely to open up, though—it seems safer as they’re not a humanoid creature and don’t live in the town, perhaps?) Also, while there are cute girls, they’re more interested in (Spoiler - click to show)each other than in the PC, which is refreshing to see. (One of them is a tough woman who secretly loves cute things, which is a classic anime character beat, but I like it better in this context.)

The main substance of the gameplay has two parts: one is successfully navigating conversations with characters, and the other is figuring out which characters to talk to in which order so as to nudge people towards those who might be able to help them. The latter worked nicely; the former was mostly good, but there were times when the conversation options were fairly similar and I couldn’t tell if there was a meaningful difference and if so, what it was.

The game also has a lot of endings, and the way they're presented as unlockable achievements on the final screen gives the impression of this being an "ending chase" game in the vein of Insomnia; I've since learned it's not meant to be, but as we players are easily led astray by "here's a list of things to unlock", I feel compelled to note that actually chasing those endings winds up feeling unrewarding because they're somewhat repetitive. They can have amusing moments (I think the one where you get thrown in a lake is my favorite, even if it’s mostly kind of an expanded version of the “forgetting you’re a rock” joke that gets made in a number of other contexts), but the majority of the non-ideal endings are “someone takes you somewhere and you just have to sit there because you’re a rock”.

A related issue is that there is, as far as I can tell, exactly one non-ideal ending that you actually need to see to make progress, so you have a bit of a “doing X is not useful except in the one case where it’s essential” problem.

These hiccups aside, though, it’s a charming game with cute characters and most of its structural choices are solid, and I had fun playing it.

With strong and amusing writing, an interesting cast of characters, along with plenty of charm and whimsical humor, A Rock's Tale was certainly fun to play.

Well, you're a rock. Along the way, plenty of people will stop by. You can choose to say nothing, like a real rock would, or engage in some funny conversation. Lots of these people have all sorts of different problems, and along the way, you'll find out that some of these problems are interconnected as you try to solve them.

Still, all that glitters is not gold. There will also be times where you might presume a connection and try to solve someone's problems, only to realize that you misunderstood the situation and everything is now backfiring spectacularly. Plus, some folks here just seem irredeemably lazy when you try to get them to help another.

There are no complex stat systems here. What really stood out for me was the dialogue and writing.

There are twenty endings, and I unlocked about six before I started writing this review. Nevertheless, the game was really fun to read. Even if you don't finish it, there is also plenty of fun in a partial playthrough.

This was a fun game. You play as a rock on a wilderness path. You are a talking rock.

At first, all you can do is have random encounters with people, at least one of whom definitely does not like talking rocks. Eventually, you learn more about the people and their inter-connectedness, and you gain the ability to call them to make them come.

The game has 20 endings, and you can accept any of them. There is an 'ultimate' ending you unlock by getting the others and a 'true' ending that happens if you've played long enough.

I played twice, because I ran out of time in the first one and accepted an ending. The second time, I skipped a few things, and I think that made it impossible to collect all endings, because several endings seem to only be offered once (specifically one of the florist's endings).

I also had big trouble finding out what the Freak's need was and how to solve it. I ended up looking into the code to figure it out, where I also read the final ending.

Any ending is fine. If someone plays this and finds five or more endings, as well as an ending that reveals more about your nature, that's the bulk of the game and you could probably comfortably stop there.

The writing is whimsical and goofy. There is a lot of absurdism, but the setting is consistent enough to make the absurd parts stick out and be funny instead of being a jumbled mish-mash.

It didn't stir my soul or change my life, but I was entertained while playing and enjoyed looking for endings.