Gorogoa
Developer: Buried Signal
Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
Release: 15 December 2017
Steam price: $14.99 USD
Update: 15 December 2017
Gorogoa is a visual puzzle game with point-and-click, perspective and logic based elements. Similar to Framed 2, the game (on Android and IOS) consists of solving puzzles by rearranging storyboard panels. Gorogoa uses a 4 square mechanical system that rearranges the scenes to tell a story visually. The player can interact with a hand-drawn image in a square by zooming in/out, separating visual frames, combining/detaching foreground with background, and connecting the images in the squares. For example: moving an archway to another panel to follow a character enter through the archway to travel to the next picture.
The game’s story is not written or narrated. It is told visually through symbolic elements. The game begins with a boy seeing a mysterious entity. After some research, he sets off to look for five different coloured balls. From then on, the visuals can be interpreted differently depending on person to person. Therefore, the ending can be difficult to discern. The illustrator intended to put emphasis on the journey. Having jumbled images, combining to reveal an internal gameplay story delivers a rewarding experience.
The puzzles are intricately designed, requiring multiple actions to reach a solution. In the early game, the puzzles are easier and can be solved with trial and error. But as the player gets used to the many puzzling techniques, the game increases the difficulty level. The game evolves mechanics into time-based puzzles, forcing the player to adapt.
Gorogoa stands out from other puzzle games because of its hand-drawn creativity that allows each visual to fit nicely together to make up a complete puzzle game. The game’s art is charming with light colour tones using a pencil drawn art style. The illustrated panels are designed with detail and use distinct tonal differences to indicate the foreground and background. The interactive art is concealed in the picture, but there is a menu option to reveal the parts that are interactive. Without that feature, the game sometimes makes you feel like you are playing a hidden object game. The animations help bring the hand-drawn art to life, giving a clear idea of the scene changes and generating new puzzle mechanics. However, the character movements feel slightly roughly drawn.
Overall the game is relaxing, with soothing background music and subtle sound effects to imply a shift in the puzzle. In some instances, there are repetitive noises that can be distracting, but the player can quickly click away from those instances.
Gorogoa is playable on GOG.com, Steam, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox, and is coming to Android soon. I played with a mouse and keyboard and can see it being playable on touch screens devices. Although the game does not have much replay value, if you enjoy puzzles, the 2-hour game is well worth the price to experience a new artistic spin on the brain teaser genre. The game did its best to give a valuable experience, despite its faults.
I rate this game: [Good]
6.5/10