In Rochard, you play as John Rochard, a miner on Skyrig the space station. The team are about to have their funding cut when they come across a strange alien artefact. Soon, the station is attacked and the team is separated. John must navigate the station and attempt to put an end to the assault.
John is equipped with a gravity gun called the G-lifter which can hook onto items to grab them. This is used in a manner of ways to progress through the environments. It will be used to stack boxes to reach higher platforms, move blocks out of the way, to pull out or place circuit breakers. Later on, you will receive upgrades so that it can be used as a laser gun, fire grenades, or as a hook to propel himself upwards.
John also receives an upgrade to control gravity which gives him a floaty jump and the ability to lift heavier boxes. Additionally, you can propel yourself higher by launching boxes you carry in the opposite direction. The way the upgrades are slowly introduced keeps the game interesting and allows for a new type of puzzles and level design.
There are a few types of barriers which play a large part of the puzzles. Red barriers allow objects to pass through but are prevent humans passing through, while the Blue ones have the opposite effect. Some barriers stop both and even your G-lifter's beam. The circuit breakers control these barriers, so many puzzles involve navigating through the environment, pulling out a breaker, then navigating through the disabled barrier. These puzzles will require a bit of observation and putting your knowledge of barriers to good use.
There are puzzles where you can hit switches to completely reverse gravity. These tend to require more thought than the other puzzles and puts your planning and jumping skills to the test.
You usually get a checkpoint in every room you enter. Since John is a miner, he isn't a standard game protagonist where he excels in combat. Instead, John is pretty weak so you have to be more tactical in combat i.e. by using a box as a shield. I found it quite easy to die, so was glad the game has a generous check-point system. John can actually fall from great heights without taking much damage, and can be reduced further by utilising reduced gravity. Once you have taken damage, John regenerates health after several seconds.
Rochard takes around six hours to complete which feels about the right length. In general, the standard of puzzles is pretty straight-forward, but are satisfying to do. The combat can be quite tricky but the generous check-points means that it is not too frustrating to replay and try again. With a bit of perseverance, the more tricky combative situations can be overcome. There's a nice balance of puzzles and combat, and it was refreshing to play a game with an over-weight character rather than a muscular macho character.