Rochard takes place in a futuristic time where truckers are driving big rigs through space instead of over pavement. Rochard is the character you play, a no-nonsense future trucker with the typical problems of a worker bee. He's got to move cargo, he's got to work with malfunctioning robots, all while keeping the company's bottom line in check. Rochard's crew have been picking apart asteroids looking for valuable fuel, but have had no luck in a long time. This asteroid proves to be different, as you'll soon find out, but the surprise isn't what Rochard was looking for.
You'll get the story fed to you as you progress through the game, but you're not required to initiate any conversations or select anything or even wait for anything to load to get this to happen. Rochard pretty much just talks to his company mates as he makes his way through the game, allowing you to focus on playing and keeping the flow of the game going.
You've got some cool future tools to use as Rochard. There's a gravity gun of sorts which lets you pick up large objects. You've also got some control over gravity in many areas. So you can turn the gravity down low if you need to do something like jump very high and reach a ladder. There are also some objects that are too heavy to move under normal gravity. You can switch it on and off on the fly, so you can see where this can go down a mind-bending path pretty quickly.
Rochard is a bit of a physics puzzler more than anything else. It's a 2D platformer, but it doesn't make you run and gun, or frantically fight anything. You'll have plenty of time to think about your next move, and execute whatever elaborate set of moves you need to do. Usually things involve pulling a door down or stacking up boxes in order to allow Rochard to jump or pass through to his next objective.
