Rose & Camellia | a Review
originally published on 14/12/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the slap champion, G.E.M.Simov, a slapper of many talents, here to tell you about the weird flash game “Rose & Camellia”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Rose & Camellia is a weird rhythm game, though at the same time it is… Well, it is a mouse-movement speed and accuracy game, rather than a rhythm game. It relies on the Player clicking a button in the lower left or right corner of the screen (relative to the Player, not the screen itself), then either sliding the mouse cursor over to the upper left corner of the screen in a particular arc (and then repeating until the button stops appearing) or sliding the mouse cursor over to the lower right corner of the screen in a different, yet still particular arc.
These buttons and movements are attacks and defenses, which constitute slaps. Naturally, the Player Character (PC) has Health, and there is a turn timer that goes down as time passes, with the PC and the Enemy swapping functions.
The PC starts off with their turn, and during their turn the “Attack” button is present on screen, on the lower right side of it. The Player must click said button with their mouse, then drag the cursor as quickly and as precisely along a particular line (going over the face of the enemy’s sprite) so as to make their Character deliver a slap to the Enemy. That can be repeated as many times as the Player’s turn timer allows, which quickly depletes, shown over the head of the Enemy.
Then, the turns switch, and the Enemy takes the offensive. The Player no longer has access to the “Attack” button, as it is not present on screen. Instead, they have access to the “Evade” button, on the lower left corner of the screen. Clicking said button, the Player needs to drag their mouse’s cursor over the PC, to roughly to where the “Attack” button normally appears, to perform an evasion and avoid the enemy’s slap. If successfully done, the Player will have access, for a very short amount of time, to the “Counter” button, which appears over the spot where the “Attack” button does, and presents the Player with the opportunity to sneak in a counter attack.
This goes on until either the PC or the Enemy runs out of Health (displayed on the lower half of the screen, under the sprites of the Characters. Now, whether a slap results in health loss is… Is dependent on how accurate the slap is, which means that the movement of the Player’s mouse must be precise and land exactly over the cheek of the enemy. In that case, the Enemy should lose one pip of health, while the visual and audio queues relating to whether the slap was a success are different… Though the enemy does not always lose a pip of health whenever that happens, even if losing health is more often done whenever those audio and visual queues are present.
However, what most often happens is that the slap is a glancing blow - it connects, but it does not do damage (the health pips beneath the enemy do not reduce in number). At the same time, sometimes they do - whether it is every three[3] glancing blows that reduce the enemy’s health, or if the number is higher, I can not tell.
Regardless, there’s something very clunky about the whole ordeal, while the gameplay mechanics are also somewhat intriguing. Depending on the berth of the Player’s swing, the enemy might also get to counter attack. Additionally, enemies also can get glancing blows on the PC, but the more powerful the enemy, the less likely that is, and so the Player needs to be ready to evade every single strike. On top of that, there are cases when the enemy slaps twice in such rapid succession that the Player is not even afforded the chance to “Evade”, though that only appears to happen after unsuccessful evasions.
The enemies - due to the fact that there are multiple of them - grow in power. The first is weakest, then the second is stronger, until reaching the last enemy, the ‘boss’, who almost always takes a pip of health away from the Player and also features the smallest hitbox, requiring more precision on the part of the Player’s swings.
Additionally, the PC’s health pips carry over between ‘fights’, so every following enemy is also harder if the Player has lost any health, due to the fact that they maintain the same quantity from the previous ‘fight’. There is an extra layer of difficulty present in the fact that there is no means of selecting a fight - the Player must beat all enemies consecutively, otherwise they are sent back to the main menu, which is unusually punishing for a flash game with as ‘comical’ a concept as this one.
Lastly, the Player can, prior to starting the game (while in the main menu) set the game’s difficulty, with there being 5 different options, though it would appear that the only thing that changes is the amount of slapping that every enemy needs to suffer through before being defeated. After fighting 5 consecutive enemies, the Player finally wins… But it is not satisfying.
The controls are clunky, nothing seems to really work (there’s very rarely any good indication of what will hit and what will not, sometimes the enemy just evades, other times it just gets a free instant hit on the PC, other times it hits even though the Player has done the proper move to evade.
Overall… The game is just punishment for the Player’s wrist. 1/3
Presentation
Rose & Camellia features this particular Japanese style (as in, it looks very anime), whilst also being adorned by loads of stuff written in japanese. It would appear that this game was originally Japanese, and then got a bit touched up to be accessible for English speakers and, thus, Western Audiences.
The sprites are nicely done, showing off loads of character, and, on top of that, featuring various states of… Beatenness. They go from being perfectly healthy, to slightly bruised, to weeping and bleeding - overall, it gets a bit gruesome a bit quickly, but then again they are slapping each other with a vengeance.
On top of that, the game has a very neat musical accompaniment that screams of a 1920s silent film’s musical score - at the very least, it reminds me of the blaring music of Faust (if you know, you know). That does not mean it is bad - not at all. It also changes (and evolves) with each fight, reaching a crescendo when the last battle is upon the Player and, coupled with the violently short amounts of time the Player has to react, creates a very intense and thrilling encounter.
However, there is another issue. As previously stated in the Gameplay part of this review, there is very good hit-feedback (two, even three types of hits), but none of them mean much. One of them indicates that no hit has occurred, but the other two indicate that a hit has occurred, yet nothing ever indicates that damage was taken or that a health pip was lost. Thus, the hit-feedback is both very good, and very bad, because the audio-visual element does not, at all, correspond to the gameplay components of the whole thing.
Then, there’s the issue of the controls. The game has no tutorial, instead opting to feature calls to action in the first (and easiest) fight, which show the Player, roughly, what kind of movement with the mouse they must perform. However, that is incredibly rudimentary and winds up being a bit insufficient for the Player, thus requiring trial and error to figure out what is what, and even then, after beating the game, they might remain uncertain of certain things - such as when a health-pip is lost.
That said, the game does a very good job at presenting itself, although marred by the fact that it affects its own Gameplay and fails to teach the Player all that much about itself. 2/3
Story
This game has a story! Lowborn Reiko (I am guessing Rose) was married to the noble son of the Tsubakikoji family, but then he died. Now, she is in a weird slap-fight for the right to inherit the house of the Tsubakikoji family, which belonged to her ex-husband and now passes on to her. First, she fights his sisters, slapping them away. Then, she fights the maid, who wants to check if Reiko is worthy of doing battle with the mother of her ex-husband.
Then, however, it turns out that the mother is not the ‘final boss’, as she is subservient to the grand madame of the house (Camellia), and so Reiko must win a slap-fight with Camellia, who… Well, Camellia punches, rather than slapping, which is quite odd. Well, Reiko wins - of course - and Camellia collapses into demonic nothingness, indicating that she was some dark force that haunted the house.
What does that tell the audience? Nothing much, aside from the fact that violence solves class issues. That’s… Odd. The story is very rudimentary, and it strikes me as a parody of anime AND roleplaying games, with ever increasing severity and seriousness in the enemies the PC fights, until finally coming upon some grotesque caricature of a woman, who is the ultimate combatant.
It’s a tad entertaining, but it is nothing to write home about. Still, it had its moments. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the Legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? While rocking a very particular concept, it is not anything special. The absolute inexplicability of how the game works, and the fact that it’s about women slapping each other ugly, is… Well, it is not very appealing. So NO, Rose & Camellia do not get the point. 0/1
Conclusion
4/10. Rose & Camellia is a game about moving the mouse from one side of the screen to the other, and doing so very quickly. It is also a game about women slapping each other bloody. Aside from that, it is a parody, or a comical take, on anime and tropes in roleplaying games. It is neat, but I would suggest experiencing it through a video, rather than actually playing it.
In the bag of mediocrity it goes, having caused more pain than pleasure. Dust cover it!