The eShop description of Rue Valley is a bit misleading; it bills the game as a “narrative RPG,” which is only half true. It's much more a point-and-click adventure mystery than a role-playing game, and if that's a swap you're happy to hear about, then you might get on with it better than I did. You also need to enjoy being stuck in a 47-minute time loop and the built-in repetition that comes with it.

You play as Eugene Harrow, a man undergoing therapy for some kind of mental or emotional struggles. A fair part of Rue Valley involves the creation of an internal mind map that records events and tasks called Intentions for Harrow to complete. The game starts at a roadside motel where you find yourself in the room of Dr. Finck, and from this point on every loop begins back 8:00pm during the final minutes of your therapy session with him and ends with an explosion of light at 8:47pm. Before the story actually gets underway, you have an opportunity to choose some character parameters that determine the dialogue choices you can make later on.

From both a narrative standpoint and a game design one, Rue Valley starts off slow and murky. It takes some time before the mechanics and ways of making genuine progress become clear. Within its isometric perspective, you guide Harrow around a handful of environments to solve a number of smaller mysteries in addition to larger ones like the nature of the time loop he's stuck in. Once you acquire a new piece of information, you can bring that to conversations with folks around you to yield new dialogue branches, and what follows then is a bit of trial and error before you figure out which tidbits unlock which doors in your mind map. Additionally, you need to consider the schedule of the other characters and events that take place in Rue Valley so that you know where and when to progress the story.

There are some tense and memorable character interactions, such as when you break into your therapist's room to learn more about another motel guest. When you have multiple objectives on the go, Rue Valley has a genuine sense of momentum that means almost everything you do will lead to a new insight or twist. However, the way in which your create-a-character's mental profile gates off certain interactions and dialogue trees is frustrating and made me feel often like I had just rolled a bad character; I can't see myself returning to a narrative experience like this one after seeing the story through, so I'm not sure why all the gatekeeping and roadblocks exist. If you're a sucker for Groundhog Day, time loop tales, or point-and-click mysteries, your enjoyment of Rue Valley may reach a higher peak. I was already tempted to check out of this motel before my suitcase was unpacked.