GRIS

All in all, GRIS is an absolute charm of an indie game. The story developing as you go along is engaging, the artwork is stunning and the puzzles are just hard enough to keep your mind working without being too hard and make you frustrated. For the first game from a small indie studio, this game is very impressive. If they continue this trend of blending aesthetics and gameplay in such a way, I can see them gaining a lot of recognition.

It’s too self-conscious, and too wrapped up in being aesthetically pleasing. It’s too tied to the idea of a neat conclusion. It’s so caught up in the language of recurring motifs and visual continuity that it doesn’t seem to notice when the emotional arc loses clarity and continuity. The overall effect for me ends up being elegant but detached. A slightly muddled compendium of the picturesque sides of grief.

GRIS is a special game. It’s not often that something in our medium can elicit such profound emotion relying solely on art, music, and the player’s interpretation of what exactly they are experiencing. This is not a game that will challenge you, and clocking in at around three hours doesn’t even last that long. But as an experience, GRIS does exactly what it needs to.