Gorogoa

A very special, unique game. It is like no other game I have played (and I count more than 36 years as a gamer). Beautiful ideas, beautiful implementation, beautiful game.

2 hours and ten minutes on my play through. Seen a lot of people complain about the length. I guess it is what it is. Had it been longer, it would probably still be in development. I think it took seven years or so to develop this. Maybe more. Better like this. Better too because no matter how much I enjoyed it, I'm not sure it would keep my interest for say ten hours. Some things are better short. With that said it was a 5/5 while it lasted.

‘Gorogoa’ is one of the most captivating and more challenging puzzle games I’ve played. It was meticulously designed, with the puzzles and story being layered and tightly woven together. The puzzles are unique in that they require you to visualize the game world differently, and dissect images into their parts. The game involves manipulating pictures in a 2 x 2 grid. Each picture tells a small part of the story like in a comic strip, and is itself a puzzle or part of a bigger one. Some pictures are made up of a few layers of drawings, which can be stripped off and recombined to form new ones. By deconstructing, zooming in and out of, and moving images, you push the story forward and uncover the backstory of the titular monster. Once you’ve seen how various layers of art in one picture can fit with the others in a totally separate image, you’ll see the brilliance of the art and puzzle designs. You can tell developer Jason Roberts had put much thought and effort in the creation of ‘Gorogoa’. It’s truly an admirable feat for him to design this fun and stimulating game by himself. It may disappoint some players that they can complete ‘Gorogoa’ within a few hours or less. Yet, quality exceeds quantity here, as the art composition is simply astonishing. The learning curve in ‘Gorogoa’ is just right, though the puzzles got noticeably harder by the middle chapter. Still, with a bit of thinking and trial and error, they’re all reasonably solvable. Once you’ve finished the game, its 2012 demo is unlocked for you to check out. As someone who hadn’t seen or played the demo prior to playing this game, I found it interesting to see how the ideas and art in the demo became more refined and expanded for the final release. It’s very easy for me to recommend ‘Gorogoa’. It’s really worth playing even if it’s just to appreciate the intricate art that Roberts had produce, and see how he used the art as bases of many of its wonderful puzzles.

Shows the way towards what videogames could be

Puzzle with beautiful graphics and intersting mechanics. You have to think a bit out of the box, what makes it so intriguing.