You see, Gorogoa is presented as a grid made up of four squares. But it’s how the drawings are put together that makes it really stand out.
Completely hand-drawn, Gorogoa is at very least an impressive showcase of artistic ability. There are some gameplay conventions, sure, in the form of puzzles to solve, but Gorogoa would be best described as an interactive piece of art.Īnd as an interactive piece of art, it’s quite something. Gorogoa's puzzles never feel like obstacles to overcome one at a time – they are the means by which the story is told.In fact, it’s probably unfair to call it a “game” at all. Between and even during the process of solving a puzzle I often found myself reading Gorogoa like a book or admiring it like you would a painting, allowing its collection of detailed landscapes, cluttered homes, and ancient artifacts to take on new meanings over time until its story became a living, breathing thing rather than just a serviceable plot. Lavish palaces stand tall over the crumbling ruins of a city. Images of war and destruction juxtapose scenes of great wealth and royalty. It is Gorogoa’s biggest, most fulfilling puzzle to piece together: you help guide a young boy on his quest to collect fruits for a majestic yet terrifying beast, but for what purpose is not immediately known. “Like nearly all puzzle games Gorogoa’s imaginative puzzles sadly lose that initial spark of excitement after you learn their tricks, but its ambiguous and somber story warrants more than one playthrough, as late-game revelations lend insightful new context to its early moments.
In this way, every exciting step in my journey also became a startling revelation about Gorogoa’s captivating mythology - small moments that play towards a larger, more intricate whole. I found myself reaching far into the past and out into distant lands to enact change on the present - a clever mechanism that fuels the fresh and magical interactions behind each puzzle and acts as a bittersweet meditation on memory and loss. In these puzzles time and space aren’t bound by the laws of physics, allowing old and new to merge into a singular moment. In another, I guided a character through a series of framed photographs by stacking doorways, rotating ancient ruins, and slotting the patterns of a porcelain plate into a floating cog. In one sequence, I stole the glow of a distant star to light a lantern. But as you explore, rearrange, and stack its panels - sometimes stripping layers off one image to create two distinct ones - its disjointed vignettes, symbols, and scenes start to come together in increasingly surprising ways.
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