Gorogoa also looks fantastic, thanks to its beautiful, hand drawn animations that often look like moving paintings. Its use of space in those four squares is phenomenal at times, and it’s a great feeling when you work out the solution to a particularly difficult brainteaser. It might seem like I’m being overly harsh on the game, but I want to assure you that it really is a good puzzle game. It is possible to beat Gorogoa’s puzzles using brute force as I did on one particular occasion, but it should never have come to that. That said, more intelligent folk than I might not struggle quite as much, but a truly great puzzle game would subtly teach players of any level, through intelligent gameplay mechanics as you play. The game doesn’t exactly ease you into this during earlier chapters, so it can become a bit overwhelming. While this is happening, you’ll need to move other scenes around and prepare to switch things around quickly. During chapter four, for example, it becomes necessary to create multiple scenes at once, putting them together to form larger, animated scenes that will alter the state of each individual square. That said, it sometimes stretches logic a bit and you’ll be forced to think outside the box, which can sometimes go against the flow and make things too complicated. Or it’s about using a star to bring a lamp’s light to life, attracting a moth that then offers the next layer of the puzzle in the design upon its wing. Logic plays a big part in solving the puzzles throughout the game, as often it’s just a case of finding a ledge in one scene, that can be placed alongside another scene’s ledge to create a walkway. But to be honest, the story felt less important than the puzzles contained within the two hours of Gorogoa. They seem to span different locations and even periods in time, which further increased my inability to make any sense of its plot. There are six chapters, with five of them focusing on the retrieval of each magical sphere I mentioned earlier. This mechanic is incredibly intelligent and certainly unique, and it gets more and more complex as the game goes on. Often, scenes will have a window of some kind and, once layered over another scene, this window will reveal something integral to the plot and your progression. This zooms into an item or pans across to another room, but soon enough you’ll find yourself dragging the image onto another square, revealing another scene underneath. Once the animation ends, the scene will remain static and you’ll use the mouse to discover clickable elements within the frame. In one square, you’ll watch the animation of the boy as he’s watching this mythical creature in the distance. When the game begins, you’re presented with a large square in the centre of the screen, split into four smaller squares. Hell, I’m confused and I’m the one writing this bloody review.
Let me explain, as you’re no doubt confused. The main mechanic of Gorogoa is moving scenes around so that they connect in abstract, yet somehow logical ways. You see, finding these balls isn’t as simple as visiting a few locations like Nathan Drake or Lara Croft might it’s a little more complicated than that. And so, with this in mind, the boy sets off to find these spherical trinkets. The way to commune with the creature, it seems, is to find five magical balls for some kind of offering. But it’s beautifully presented and there are hints of story here and there, possibly more easily seen by those with a bigger brain than mine. Even by the end, I was still none the wiser. Without dialogue or basic storytelling, it’s difficult to say what exactly the game is really about.
Gorogoa begins with a strange creature flying around a city, and a young boy who seems to want to find it and communicate with it. I particularly like them when they’re part of a story-based game, such as the old Broken Sword games or some of the older survival horror titles (I will never forget solving that piano puzzle in the original Silent Hill), but Gorogoa isn’t really either of those. I like a good puzzle, despite not being very good at them.