Gorogoa is a passion project created by Jason Roberts that proves that with enough time, care, and devotion you can make something truly special. It is a unique puzzle game that was seven years in the making with all of the hand drawn images and animations provided by himself alone. An impressive feat resulting in an impressive game.

The game starts with a young boy spotting a large monster outside of his window and looking through a book on how to appease it. The tome shows pictures of presenting the beast with an offering of several different colored fruits in a large bowl. From there you embark on a journey through space and time to collect these fruits and give them to the behemoth creature.

Gorogoa is entirely illustrated by hand and features a puzzle system in which you have drawings laid out across four panels, which you can then zoom in and out of and drag the panels over to one another in the hopes of connecting them in a shared way. For example, you can zoom in on a shining star in a constellation and drag an image of an empty lantern over it and when the pieces overlap properly, the lantern will light up and cause a moth to fly to it and lead to a chain reaction of events in the other frame. I’ll admit that when the game first starts, it feels like a lot of the puzzles are solved by just using trial and error, but after a short time you’ll find that that method doesn’t work anymore. The game evolves and makes you think about how the pictures actually relate to each other and fit together

The sound design in Gorogoa is excellent. There is no voice acting in it whatsoever, but instead it relies on real life sounds to give the images depth and a purposefully minimalist musical score. While this might not sound very grandiose, I found this to be a wise choice so as not to take away from the beauty of the game and instead make a more impactful contribution to the overall experience.

Gorogoa is a seamless game with no loading screens or separate chapters. It is a reasonably short game and I would highly recommend that you go through it in one continuous playthrough to get the best sense of the story as you can. You’ll witness much, from war-torn landscapes to spiritual discoveries. The game is fairly vague with the actual story and leaves a lot of it up to interpretation as you journey with the boy over the course of his life spanning the 20th century. I strangely didn’t feel cheated by the lack of definitive answers; instead I felt enticed to come up with my conclusions on what transpired over the lifetime of this boy.

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.

 

Graphics: 10 Exquisitely hand drawn and simply, yet cleanly, animated.	Gameplay: 9.0 Surreal and inventive puzzles utilizing the surroundings and objects in each picture and cleverly overlay one another.
Sound: 8.5 Relies mostly on real sounds with a simplistic yet beautiful score.	Fun Factor: 8.0 An amazing concept with an interesting story and genuinely fun puzzles. Left me wanting just a little bit more.
Final Verdict: 9.0

Gorogoa is available now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One Android, and iOS.

Reviewed on PC.