Not a bad month!
Gris is a no-brainer if you haven’t played it. Fundamentally simple puzzle-platformer, but one of the most beautiful and emotionally evocative games I’ve ever played. Nearly every frame of this game is a work of art, and the wonderful score by Berlinist complements the gameplay perfectly, directly and indirectly.
Aside from Return to Monkey Island - never played any of them - the rest is pretty meh for me.
I think the things that have kept me off of Gris:
- When you know you’re operating within a dream/artsy world, it becomes hard to convince yourself anything you’ll do will cause change. I’ve had a similar issue with games that had a plot twist that everyone/everything you’ve interacted with was part of a virtual simulation.
- I already know the game is themed around grief/loss, which again makes it hard to imagine doing anything to cause change. I remember a game called Rime operating a similar way, where most of the interaction is after the “story” has actually happened, getting backstory exposed, and then the game ends.
- Haven’t really heard anything positive about the actual platforming gameplay. There’s already a lot of games focused on getting just that right that aren’t so fun.
If I’m blatantly wrong about any of those assumptions, I’d be interested to hear it, but there’s so many moody art-games out there at this point I need to be selective about which I put time into.
I’m not sure if it’s makes any difference to you, but Gris is very abstract in its “storytelling,” such as it is. There’s no backstory to expose, no reality vs. virtual simulation or dream world. It’s about a player figure in a colorless world who begins the game in an implied state of incompleteness and melancholy. You guide her through a journey punctuated by moments of adversity, wonder, and triumph, communicated by an affecting marriage of gameplay, score, and cinema. But that’s it, there’s no dialogue, exposition, or narration, no backstory or plot twists.
The gameplay itself is fine-tuned and accessible. You learn a few new abilities during the course of the game that serve as tools for navigation and puzzle solving. And there are no fail states. It is meticulously lightweight in presentation and play, but equally powerful in emotional immersion and effect. At least, that was my experience.
