Also On: PS4, PC, Switch
Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
Developer: Jason Roberts
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: E
If youโve ever wondered what a hand-crafted, artisanal video game might look like, wonder no more: Gorogoa is precisely that.
That, Iโll admit, is a pretty snarky way of looking at Gorogoa, and it makes the game sound like some kind of hipster fetish item โ when, it reality, the former is undeserved, and the latter is untrue. Gorogoa is so earnest and heartfelt that itโs probably the opposite of a hipster game, to the point that treating it with snark seems almost cruel.
See, Gorogoa is the result of developer Jason Roberts drawing thousand of illustrations by hand, and turning them into a video game. Itโs pretty clear from the get-go that Roberts put his heart and soul into making these images jump off the screen, and thereโs not a moment that goes by where you wonโt feel at least a little bit impressed by the level of detail, to say nothing of how pretty everything looks.
Of course, as is the case with even the shiniest, most polished entry in an AAA franchise, thereโs a lot more to a game than its graphics. There needs to be compelling gameplayโฆand, on that front, Gorogoa isnโt quite as easy to recommend.
For starters, itโs very short, and doesnโt have a lot of replay value. You can get through the whole thing in about an hour, and once itโs all done, you wonโt have much reason to go back and play it again, apart from wanting to see all the gorgeous drawings.
On top of that, while Iโm sure that Roberts has a pretty clear idea of the story heโs trying to tell, Iโm afraid itโs less clear to me as a player. Or, more accurately, even if I do get it for the most part (I think), Iโm having a much harder time getting into it. You obviously donโt need to be into the story to want to play Gorogoa, but Iโm sure that it helps. Instead, youโre just left with a series of pretty pictures โ which is more than most games offer, but thatโs hardly enough to justify a purchase.
Gorogoaโs biggest problem, though, is also its most basic: itโs a puzzle game in which the puzzles arenโt all that interesting. Itโs lots of moving pictures around to trigger events, and then watching as the story moves forward. When the cutscene ends, itโs on to moving around the next pictures. Thereโs some skill involved, but not much โ there were multiple times where I was able to figure out what to do next just by clicking around until things happened. In this respect, in fact, Iโd say that part of Gorogoaโs problem (or, more accurately, part of my problem with Gorogoa) is that itโs not really a puzzle in the traditional, video game sense of the word. Rather, it harkens back to jigsaw puzzles, where you usually move pieces around until things start to make sense. Itโs the same thing here, more or less.
Which means, ultimately, that youโll have to decide what you want from Gorogoa before you go into it. If you want a mind-bending puzzle game along the lines of, like, Portal or something, itโs not going to deliver that, and youโll want to stay away. If, however, you want a gentle puzzle game with heartfelt visuals, that will remind you of life pre-gaming, then Gorogoa offers a solid โ if brief โ experience.
Annapurna Interactive provided us with a Gorogoa Xbox One code for review purposes.