Gorogoa

Gorogoa is an immaculate puzzle game. Gorgeous art, beautiful but ominous ambient music, and mind-blowingly clever design combine for something special. It's a game like nothing we've ever played before, and with a modest run-time and low price-point to boot, you have no reason not to snag this outstanding experience.

Gorogoa is a lavish work of art that masterfully weaves a compelling tale while providing a distinctive puzzle solving experience unlike any other. It might seem a little steep to pay $14.99 for a game that’s only a couple hours long, but I assure you that this surreal, handcrafted masterpiece is well worth it.

Gorogoa crafts its inventive, sliding-tile puzzles and magical world with a graceful simplicity across a compact but fulfilling adventure. The excitement of solving each puzzle may be lost on a repeat playthrough, but its hand-drawn art and clever payoffs are no less satisfying to watch unfold again and again. Gorogoa manages to say so much without uttering a single word, endowing it with a mystery that invites a more attentive, thoughtful revisit — and one that I was more than happy to accept.

While Gorogoa was a bit on the short end and I wasn’t really sure what happened during the story, that didn’t matter much to me in the end. I was provided with some fantastic puzzles that really had me thinking how to solve them, all while enjoying some lovely art and music. If you’re a real fan of either of those or both, then Gorogoa is well worth checking out.

Gorogoa is a truly mesmerising experience from start to finish whose greatest sin is that it’s all over far too quickly. Your short time spent with the game, however, will take you on a truly memorable journey unlike any other. Beautiful, ingenious and full of mystery, Gorogoa is a game I simply couldn’t put down and one I’m eager to return to again even if just to bask in the magnificent world Jason Roberts has handcrafted one more time.

Overall, my time with Gorogoa was brief yet beautiful. I wish that this was an actual storybook, a heavy thing bound in leather and built from parchment. Yet I know that pressing this experience to paper would limit it, would erase certain critical elements. You can’t touch a piece of paper or wood and have it glide into two components, one of which is the portal to a new world.