Video Game / Riley & Rochelle

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Riley & Rochelle is a deduction-based Puzzle Game developed by Owlskip Games and Tun Ding Productions, a collaboration between British developer Tim Sheinman and Canadian musician Natalia Yanchak.

Indie musician Riley Stone and pop star Rochelle Robert were two of the most important artists of the 90s, but when executive Niamh Ryan and her colleague Dan begin work on creating a biopic about them, they realize they need to learn more about their subjects to better understand their lives. Therefore, they must sift through the archives of their subjects, looking at their rise to fame and the story of their tumultuous relationship.

As Niamh, players must go through the two artists' undated diaries and deduce when the events stated happened, using archived recordings, deductions from their music, and the context of real-life events.

Riley & Rochelle was released for PC on October 18, 2022.

Please note that, as a deduction-based game, several spoilers may be unmarked.

Riley & Rochelle displays examples of the following tropes:

• The '90s: Set in the 90s and containing several media distinctive of the era.
• Age-Gap Romance: Rochelle got together with Osman soon after being crowned Miss Quebec, having met him when he was judging the event; she was 18 while his age is unclear but implied to be significantly older^note if the Eurovision he was supposed to participate in was the 1979 edition, and assuming that he was 16 (the current minimum age limit) at the time, he would have been about 27 during the pageant. The two subsequently moved to Quebec City to start her career with him as her manager, much to the disapproval of both her mother and Stephanie; however, after her show there turned into a disaster, Osman declared her career finished and asked her to move to Turkey with him, with her refusing and returning home.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Transcripts for audio recordings of interviews and shows can be obtained using the settings menu, though the game notes that this may affect the game's difficulty.
  • After completing the game once, the game shows the "Endings" option on the main menu so you can see all the endings.
• Ambiguously Bi: Discussed during Stephanie's interview in Chapter 1: Rochelle and Stephanie were in a relationship between the ages of 13 and 17, with Rochelle breaking things off due to, in Stephanie's words, starting to lean more into her Catholic faith, and all her subsequent relationships were with men. Stephanie muses whether their relationship was just Rochelle discovering herself before insisting that said relationship deserves more recognition regardless; for her own part, she is married to a woman in the present. The game itself leaves it unclear whether their relationship was a one-off on Rochelle's part or whether she just happened to only date men or suppressed that aspect of herself; it isn't helped by her journal entries in Chapter 3 positively gushing about her admiration for Aimee while they live together before the success of "Strong".
• Alliterative Name: Several characters, including Rochelle Robert, Sadie Safdie, Osman Ozdemir, Ants Andino, and Sabrina Sawyer.
• Beauty Contest: As a teenager, Rochelle participated in several pageantry events in the Quebec area, and her being crowned Miss Quebec led to her being discovered by Osman. Chapter 3 even asks players to deduce the podium positions of the three biggest pageants in the area; solving this unlocks a recording of an interview with a pageant organizer about Rochelle's time in pageantry. Notably, said interview shows the darker aspects of the pageant: the organizer shares her beliefs about how harshly she judges the (often underage) girls' bodies, shows disdain for Rochelle "breaking all the rules" (which is implied to have been because of her participating against her own daughter), and brushing off an ethics complaint filed against her by Stephanie Lavoie due to the council advocating for a "traditional definition of femininity", implying that she was discriminated against for being a lesbian.
• Bland-Name Product: "Chart Topper" for Billboard, even using the same colours.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: In-universe. "Strong", a tie-in for a movie of the same name starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Bruce Willis, and Steven Seagal, became Rochelle's first big hit, surpassing the film in its legacy and leading to her being signed by Sabrina Sawyer.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: The reason Riley broke up with Sadie is that she did... something during his band's New Year's Eve gig while extremely drunk that caused him to lose respect for her.
• Chekhov's Gun: Right from the start, three pictures can be seen on the wall. Only later do we realize that these pictures are still from movies which Riley and Rochelle worked on: they are (from left to right) the posters for What It Takes, I Am Cody, and Strong.
• Darkest Hour: Chapter 2 shows Rochelle at her lowest: after Osman took her to Quebec City by promising to kickstart her career, her show in Spectrum turned into a disaster (in no small part due to criticisms of her songs being considered too sexually explicit for such a young performer), and Osman declared her career finished and asked her to move to Turkey with him; she refused and returned home, choosing to participate in a local singing competition at her mother's suggestion. However, her performance in the competition was so bad that she burst into tears mid-song, mentally deciding to give up on her dreams of a musical career right there. Thankfully, Aimee saw her talent during the competition and gave her a shoulder to cry on as well as an opportunity to work with her.
  I decided to give up singing today. The competition was a total disaster. I hated it and I don't know what happened but... Returning to that world was a mistake. And for about twenty minutes I gave up on every dream I'd ever had. Came up with a whole plan to move back in with Maman and get a desk job in Trois-Rivieres.
• Disappeared Dad: We learn nothing about Rochelle's father, with her having been raised by Bernice.
• Executive Meddling: Chapter 4 has Rochelle deal with her label refusing to let her make Summer, the album she had been working on throughout her 1995 tour; while she had mostly been performing work written by other people so far, Summer was her first original material. While Sabrina was solidly in her corner, the rest of the executives insisted that no one would believe that Rochelle could write songs and that it wasn't "contemporary enough", wanting her to work with Swedish producer Frida Samsberg instead (though that collaboration does at least give her another hit in "What It Takes"); the only remnant of the album is an unreleased version of the title track that Niamh can hear during the game. invoked
• Expy: River of Roses is, in many ways, a fairly direct analogue for Two the Hard Way, a failed collaboration between two musicians in a romantic relationship with contrasting musical styles, with the failure of the album here leading to the end of the relationship.
• Family of Choice: The Ryans became essentially honorary family to both Riley and Rochelle, particularly given their fraught relationships with their own families. While things became a little awkward when Niamh and Riley broke up and she subsequently became Rochelle's manager, he remained close to the Ryans, particularly Orla.
  Rochelle: Both of our real families were complex and.. messy, fraught with trauma and loss. Being around Orla felt like you belonged somewhere. Nobody questioned you - you just felt the warm, comforting hug of a blanket being wrapped around your shoulders when you walked into the room. And Riley needed that more than any of us. Turns out, I needed it too. I just didn't know it until she arrived.
• Fighting Irish: Brandon is the most clear-cut example, showing a very pugnacious attitude when he hears of Riley's "meat puppet" jibe; when he finally meets Riley backstage at the Oscars when the latter confronts him when he tries to forcibly kiss Rochelle, he even brings it up before punching him out. Downplayed with Niamh, who is more verbally confrontational, and wholly averted with Orla.
• Historical In-Joke: During his interview in Chapter 2, Osman says that, while he never participated in Eurovision, he almost did, saying that he was selected to participate but couldn't due to Turkey pulling out due to "international pressure". This strongly implies that he would have been a participant in the 1979 edition, which Turkey pulled out of due to pressure from Arab countries caused by the competition being held in Jerusalem.
• Hypothetical Casting: invokedThe Riley & Rochelle movie is shown to have cast Ryan Gosling as Riley, Zoe Saldaña as Rochelle, Alfred Molina as Osman, Michael Fassbender as Brandon, Julianne Moore as Frida, Emma Thompson as Orla, Kristin Scott Thomas as Sabrina, and Natasha Lyonne as Aimee.
• In a World…: Played for Laughs in the introduction, where Dan shows Niamh three treatments of the Riley-Rochelle biopic, with Niamh dismissing them due to not being truly representative of the real people they were and are and leading her to start working on researching their lives in more detail.
  In a world where two lovers could never be together...
• Inventor of the Mundane: By the time of Chapter 5 (1997), Osman has become a millionaire due to having invented "some kind of rubber that is in every tennis shoe in North America".
• Lyrical Dissonance: Chapter 4 has Orla tell Riley that Lexus wants to use "Sleepers" in a car commercial; the song is actually about walking home from a party late at night, but has a dreamy lo-fi sound that seems to tie into their campaign for "smooth, dream-like comfort". Riley agrees to the deal because the money is too good, but worries about feeling like a Sell-Out.
• Meet Cute: As told by Rochelle in "I, Rochelle", Riley and Rochelle met for the first time as they were both driving towards the Oscars, with both being nominated (her for "What It Takes", him for "Cowboy"), with his beat-up Ford Maverick accidentally hitting her limousine. Given that her co-passenger Brandon was incapacitated due to quaalude use, she charged out of the car and onto the street, complete in high heels and billowing satin dress, to confront him, only for him to drive away and for her to have to drag a drugged-out Brandon to the venue; she was subsequently shocked to realize that the man was in fact Riley Stone, who was competing against her for Best Original Song. After she and Brandon won, the two went backstage and Brandon tried to kiss her against her will; Riley confronted him and Brandon punched him out and ran away. As Rochelle helped Riley to his feet, he said he was leaving the ceremony to play a show for Orla's niece and invited her to join him; she agreed.
• Multiple Endings: Four possible endings, all Bittersweet, depending on [[spoiler:who Niamh chooses to be the hero of Riley & Rochelle.
  • The One Where Riley Wins: The film is a success and Riley's career is revitalized, with his comeback album becoming a success, and he is now Happily Married to Sylvia. However, Rochelle's career as a songwriter falls off after her second single for Brandon tanks (which results in Sabrina not taking her calls and Brandon falling Off the Wagon), she is still single, and she finally decides to return home to Trois-Riviere.
  • The One Where Rochelle Wins: The film is a success and Rochelle's career is revitalized: she returns to the spotlight after Brandon's album goes triple platinum, gets engaged to her cowriter Evan, and is considering returning to making her own music. However, Riley's bar burns down, with him suspecting that Daphne's uncles did it after they hooked up, and has bought a one-way ticket to Mexico, his career destroyed.
  • The One Where They Both Win: The film is a blockbuster, and both Riley and Rochelle's careers are revitalized, enough that they go on a successful reunion tour and River of Roses is Vindicated by History. However, the two decide that they cannot be together, even though it is clear that they still have feelings for each other, and part ways after the tour.
  • The One True Happy Ending: The film is a failure, and both Riley and Rochelle do not return to music. However, they reconnect years later at SXSW and rediscover the spark between them, getting back together. By the time of the final journal entry, the two are married, Riley has bought a ranch in Montana, Rochelle has begun a sugar pie business and have three children (with their younger twins about to be christened), and live happily together.
  • Other dependent events depending on who is chosen as the comic relief and the mentor: Frida is arrested in Atlanta when she is caught with a large amount of weed; Aimee is inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; Osman has opened a spa in Turkey; Brandon is shown participating in a The Masked Singer-like competition and headbutts Ryan Seacrest when he is found out; and Sabrina now spends her time on her racehorses.
• Noodle Incident: We never learn what exactly Sadie did during the New Year's Eve gig while drunk that caused Riley to break up with her, with neither Riley (in his journal) nor Sadie (in her interview) going into details, but whatever it was was bad enough for him to apologize to the manager and pick up a couple of shifts in the place, and Sadie says that she has gone to therapy to ensure it doesn't happen again.
• Questionable Casting: invokedDiscussed by the reviewer for (the Oscar-nominated!) What It Takes, for which Rochelle sang the title song together with Brandon, which starred Charlie Sheen as an American soldier in the Vietnam War who parachutes behind enemy lines, is captured, and falls in love with the local leader's daughter, played by (of all people) Demi Moore; even the reviewer describes it as an "inexplicable piece of casting".
• Running Gag: Whenever characters talk about Strong (the movie, not Rochelle's tie-in song), they always reference how much orange juice Steven Seagal's character drank during that movie.
• Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: One of Rochelle's diary entries in Chapter 8 has her talk about how she has seen Pretty Woman thirty-six times.
• Sell-Out: In Chapter 4, Riley feels conflicted when Lexus approach Orla to try to use "Sleepers" for their car ad campaign, eventually agreeing to it after she convinces him that the money is too good to turn down. His diary entry notes that he feels awkward even using the free car they give him, wondering whether it would come off as too ostentatious, and a later interview has him defend himself from the allegations of selling out from his fans. Eventually, upon realizing how expensive maintaining a Lexus is, he tries to trade it in for a cheaper car; eventually having it smashed after painting "FUCK LEXUS" on it.
• Shipper on Deck: Orla heavily supports Riley getting together with Niamh, even saying in her voicemail in Chapter 3 that she doesn't mind if he "snogs her" after Thanksgiving, to the point that, when they break up in Chapter 4, Riley worries how it would affect Orla.
• Shout-Out:
  • A mug on Niamh's table says, "No Syd, No Pink!" with a picture of the prism from the cover of The Dark Side of the Moon (1973).
  • Three of the records Rochelle notes that she has to listen to for research are janet., Exile in Guyville, and Mariah Carey's Music Box.
  • When Riley accepts the free Lexus as part of him allowing the company to use "Sleepers" for their ad campaign, he says that driving the car to the "Save the Orcas" protest made him feel like Michael Douglas in suspenders.
• So Bad, It's Good: invokedRochelle's reaction to seeing What It Takes, aided by a scene where it uses her song:
  Attended a preview of What It Takes. The reviews were right about it... mostly... I have to say, when CS and DM come charging out of the jungle, with the explosions and everything going off around them, then they turn and kiss and my song plays? What a moment! I want to hate this movie but how can I???
• Stage Mom: Rochelle's mother involved her in local pageants since she was around 11.
• Tempting Fate: Rochelle has a tendency to do this.
  • Chapter 6's final Rochelle diary entry is written in December 1997, and has her muse that 1998 "is going to be transformative for Riley and me...things are gonna change for us and honestly I can't wait for it". 1998 turns out to be a terrible year for them, with the failure of River of Roses, both of them being dropped by their label, Riley's arrest, and the two breaking up.
• Titled After the Song: All of the game's chapters are named after a song by Riley and/or Rochelle.
• Uptown Girl: Working-class indie musician Riley got into a relationship with middle-class pop star Rochelle.
• Working with the Ex: Sort of. Riley dated Niamh for a while after starting to work with her sister Orla, but she broke up with him a few months later. She would go on to become Rochelle's manager soon after Brandon stopped paying her, much to Riley's discomfort when she told him after the two started dating, though it was resolved when she told them to talk things out.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: A minor example, but notable in a game that invites deduction. Stephanie states in her interview that she and Rochelle were together between the ages of 13 and 17, and Rochelle's diary entry after her victory in Miss Quebec, in July 1990, has her talk about how much she wanted to make out with her but couldn't, implying that they were still together at this point. However, a later diary entry in Chapter 8 has her state that she is 27 in January 1999, implying that she was 18 during the pageant.