Nintendo Switch

22
Oct
2018
GoNNER

GoNNER

Pronounced Like You’re Screaming Most of the Word

Today, children, we have a brief history of the roguelike genre. Inspired by Dungeons and Dragons, traditional rogue-likes focus on turn-based combat, procedurally-generated levels (typically dungeons), and permadeath. The likes of Rogue, Hack, Moria and other games you’ve never played established the genre. Games like the Binding of Isaac and Spelunky define the “rogue-lite” genre (or “roguelike-like” for my stutterers out there) which infused roguelike concepts with platforming, beat-em-up, or FPS gameplay. Although different in presentation, each roguelike/lite poses a steep challenge, requiring players to learn gradually as they die. And that, children, is how the genre led to the Education Genocide of 2015.

Like many others in the genre, GoNNER embraces several traits of a standard roguelite while experimenting with others to twist the definition of the genre. With its emphasis on high scores and simple gameplay, it even plays more like an arcade game compared to other roguelites like Dead Cells or Enter the Gungeon. In this sense, GoNNER does away with many of the archetypes that muddy gameplay and reduce accessibility. In doing so, however, it limits its own potential, presenting an experience that’s refreshing but ultimately fleeting.

What is it?

GoNNER follows a droplet of water, Ikk, who goes looking for a fantastic gift for his beloved land-whale-friend. As is standard for a water-whale romance, Ikk must kill waves of enemies (à la the run-and-gun side-scrolling platformers of old) across four procedurally-generated worlds. Along the way, he will find new weapons, heads, and items to aid his massacre. He will also die, over and over again because that happens to water droplets.

As Ikk, you begin each run by customizing your loadout. Each head provides a different amount of health as well as a passive ability like a third jump, hovering capabilities, or explosion immunity. Next, your guns range from rocket launchers to shotguns to your standard pistol and serve to alter the gameplay the most. Lastly, you have your activated items which can give you an additional jump, temporary invincibility, or even an extra life. Shops are sprinkled between worlds, allowing you to change your loadout, but most players will find themselves most comfortable rocking their original gear.

Your weapon will clear out the majority of your enemies, but Ikk takes inspiration from Mario and can stomp creatures to death as well. Using both methods can be key in stringing kills together, and these combos reward you with more points, ammo clips, and purple glyphs. Glyphs prove to be invaluable later in your runs because with enough of them, you can respawn, ensuring your death doesn’t result in a game over. It’s like how rich, sick people use their money to buy organs off the black market.

What’s good?

  1. GoNNER is one of the most stylistically beautiful games on the Switch. The game begins in monochrome, but vibrant blues, reds, and yellows later seep into the black background. Walls and floors are only visible if next to you, an enemy, or an item, and they appear and disappear based on everything’s movements. This effect creates a world that is constantly in flux, shifting and dissolving in response to your actions. If you achieve a high enough combo, the music intensifies, enemies become harder variants of themselves, and all visuals become a trippy multicolor masterpiece that tastes like rainbows. Achieve an even larger combo, and the world devolves into a stark black/white jittery metal album cover.
  2. GoNNER makes the paradox possible by being an easily accessible but difficult game. You don’t need to read an entire Gamepedia website to understand what you’re doing or how to improve yourself. Dodge better and shoot better; that’s it. Although GoNNER won’t break you like Crypt of the Necrodancer or Darkest Dungeon, you’ll still encounter a sizable number of game overs before you complete your first run.
  3. The daily challenge mode brings needed variety. It forces you to adapt to a random loadout and trek through unfamiliar level layouts. For those searching for a higher difficulty, this mode kicks you into the wilderness with nothing but a loincloth, a broken can opener, and two expired cans of Whole Kernel Fiesta Corn.

What’s bad?

  1. In streamlining the roguelite genre, GoNNER severely limited its own content. It sprinkles secrets and unlockables throughout its stages, but you can find all of these in less than 10 hours. Compare this to the Binding of Isaac which still holds surprises after fifty hours of playtime, and GoNNER looks somewhat emaciated.
  2. Due to the limited content, the game also grows monotonous quickly. Your items, heads, and weapons dictate how you play, but this is where the variety ends. Despite being procedurally-generated, the levels don’t change enough for runs to feel unique. As you attempt to edge closer to completing a run, the early levels blur together, becoming a sludge of mind-numbing running and gunning. Hi-score chasers and speedrunners will feast on this action, but everyone else will eventually tire of the tedium.
  3. Difficult games usually punish poor plays, but in GoNNER, a well-intentioned but ultimately messy damage system offers cruel and unusual punishment. Based on the head, you have a set number of hearts, but when you take damage, your head, weapon, and item are flung from your body. As a defenseless water droplet, you must pick everything up once again to continue the fight. If you’re damaged again while headless, you die. Because enemies tend to swarm your body, you’ll often be utterly obliterated or down two hearts before you can escape. Fun, I tell you.

What’s the verdict?

For those who have read my Neurovoider review, my opinion of GoNNER sounds much the same but a bit less positive. GoNNER is a good game, and its art style and combo-focused gameplay offer a straightforward rogue-lite experience which can appeal to newcomers and veterans alike. However, the game does not stand among the best the genre has to offer. If you have burned through all of the other games I’ve mentioned in this review, then you can certainly place GoNNER on your docket without regrets.  For the rest, you have some rogue-lite history to cover first.

Arbitrary Statistics:

  • Score: 7
  • Time Played: Over 5 hours
  • Number of Players: 1
  • Games Like It on Switch: Enter the Gungeon, Tallowmere

Scoring Policy

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Review, 0 comments
06
Aug
2018
DOOM

DOOM

Blurry Hell

I first experienced puberty when I was 11. My second came with DOOM. Whereas the first puberty steadily introduced me to awkward changes, the DOOM Puberty forced me into keg stand after keg stand of pure testosterone. My voice dropped three octaves; my chest grew a forest of manliness; and [insert penis joke here]. My Switch was no longer a kiddie console but a portal to pure machismo.

With its endless gore, guns, and heavy synth, DOOM brought much-needed FPS hormones to Nintendo’s hybrid console. Upon arrival, critics hailed Panic Button for their masterful work in porting the behemoth to the underpowered Switch. Their praise came with an asterisk, however. Despite being a technical marvel, a Switch DOOM appeared inferior to other console editions. Considering I don’t own another console, these comparisons should not matter to me. Nonetheless, despite its quality and effects on my development, DOOM feels like a powerhouse trying to run on AA batteries.

Solomon grew a sixth finger in order to take pictures for this review.

What is it?

Contrary to popular belief, Hell is not only good for the eternal torment of the wicked and lawyers. It happens to be a phenomenal source of renewable, clean energy. The Union Aerospace Corporation on Mars labored to bring this energy to Earth, and it was successful until somebody had to make a pact with the demons and unleash unholy destruction across the facility. Now, it is up to you, the “Doom Slayer,” to eradicate the demonic hordes and close the portal to hell.

This first-person shooter focuses on frenetic battles between you and an army of monsters. The large enemy roster ranges from stereotypical zombies to the classic Cacodemons to the newcomers like the Summoners. You begin with only a pistol and a shotgun, but over the lengthy campaign, you accrue more guns, grenades, buffs, and upgrades to your suit. You will run out of ammo, but with so many weapons in your arsenal and bullets on the ground, your gore-fest will never end, especially with “Glory Kills.” When an enemy’s health runs low, you can launch a melee attack which leads to one of numerous brutal execution sequences and health drops.

As you complete missions in the main campaign, you unlock levels in the Arcade Mode. Here, you replay sections of the campaign, but the story and collectibles are stripped away. In order to win medals or rank high on the leaderboards, you must blaze through the map, slaughtering demons and racking up multipliers to contribute to your overall score.

DOOM’s multiplayer maintains the same chaotic action of the solo adventure. With no health regeneration, respawn timer, or need to reload, death dominates the battlefield. Team Deathmatch, Domination, and King of the Hill variants all make an appearance alongside unique modes like Freeze Tag in which you must freeze (kill) your opponents while thawing your teammates. Demon Runes amp the intensity by allowing players to mutate into DOOM’s iconic demons. In this form, your attacks can instakill, and you can gobble tons of damage before dying.

Being a Cacodemon is like being an M-rated Pac-Man.

What’s the Good with the Bad?

  • With its adrenaline-laced battles, DOOM transforms you into a badass. Although your enemies are terrifying, they fear your overwhelming power, so much so that their texts describe you as a one-man apocalypse. Monsters can swarm you from all sides, but you’ll quickly learn how to keep moving and mow through them. BFGs splatter whole armies; chainsaws shower blood and ammo everywhere; and even the biggest bosses succumb to your Glory Kills.
    • Despite how gratifying these fire fights can be, you’ll develop a tolerance for adrenaline. The DOOM campaign follows a pretty rigid formula: you enter an arena, lay waste to a demon horde, explore the surrounding area for knickknacks, and then move to the next fight. An intense soundtrack and unsettling environments establish a great atmosphere, but they can’t conceal that you’re basically moving from set piece to set piece.

This shows when Solomon gave up on moving and taking pictures.

  • The multiplayer offers mindless entertainment. All of the arenas are small, forcing near-constant combat. A few modes require a bit of strategy, but for the most part, your main tactic is to go in guns blazing and not die. This mentality makes for cathartic, quick games. With not much to go against it, DOOM is still the best multiplayer FPS on the Switch.
    • Unfortunately, the online network is a hell in out of itself. DOOM frequently bugs out in the lobby, stalling the countdown timer and forcing you to back out and join a different lobby. Because the online player base has dwindled significantly in recent months, getting glitched out of a full lobby is just salt on the wound. The match-making system adds another circle to this hell because players of all levels can be paired together. DOOM tries to balance teams with veteran and beginner gamers, but this just spreads out the dysfunction and results in frequent one-sided matches.

Even with a sixth finger, Solomon struggled to take pictures in multiplayer.

  • Panic Button competently delivered the DOOM experience to the Switch. Apart from the online lobby issue, the game plays exactly as a Doom game should. This may sound like a bland statement, but when other ports are so poorly optimized (i.e. Rime and WWE 2K18), good porting should be lauded.
    • Despite Panic Button’s hard work, the Switch noticeably struggles to keep up with the Doom Guy. Heavy amounts of blurring don’t mask the significant downgrade in graphics on the Switch, and it all becomes muddier during the intense battles. The frame rate can also stutter, and the music can cut out entirely at times. Most disappointingly, this port lacks SnapMap, a level-creation tool which can create maps for solo, co-op, and multiplayer romps.

Almost every picture came out blurry, resulting in several re-shoots. Solomon hates re-shoots.

What’s the verdict?

DOOM unleashes visceral shooting action on the Nintendo Switch.  I recommend the game, but it’s a port and largely inferior to other versions.  Based on the ports I’ve played thus far, I imagine I may regurgitate the same message for every other port I review.  Thus, to save time for future Solomon, I present you my reoccurring “Review Port Jingle™:”

 

Here’s another Switch port, what can I say?

These Nintendo issues don’t go away.

The game, itself, is the same, nothing more.

But frame rate and resolution are both poor,

Like portability?  Then go for it.

If not, buy it elsewhere.  Apple maggot.

 

*Sung to the tune of Tibetan throat-singing

Arbitrary Statistics:

  • Score: 8.0
  • Time Played: Over 50 hours
  • Number of Players: 1 (up to 12 online)
  • Games Like It on Switch: Wolfenstein II:  The New Colossus, Fortnite

Scoring Policy

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Review, 0 comments
17
Jul
2018
ClusterPuck 99

ClusterPuck 99

Got 99 Problems, and They’re All ClusterPuck

If games were dollars, the Switch eShop would almost be able to pay the average American healthcare bill. Almost 900 games make up a huge selection, but a substantial chunk of them arguably aren’t worth their virtual shelf space. A few obscure games get some solid reviews, but the rest are best left for amateur bloggers who have free review codes. Because I, too, am an amateur web-person, I occasionally buy these no-name releases in the pursuit of the ultimate hipster cred: liking it before it was cool.

ClusterPuck 99 was one such purchase, and it’s pucking subpar. What a joke, right? It’s cheeky to use profanity as the root of a pun. It’s also shallow comedy which doesn’t stay very funny in the long run. ClusterPuck falls into the same rut. Its concept is quirky enough to be interesting, but without the proper programming to support it, the gameplay becomes more grating with each match. This is chaff at its finest, best forgotten amongst the clusterpuck of other crap on the eShop.

What is it?

ClusterPuck is essentially hockey but with fewer safety precautions and questionable physics. You’re a puck trying to score a smaller puck into the opponent’s goal. Be it 1v1 or 4v4, you must outscore your enemies in a set time or reach a certain score to grab the win. In addition to the opposing team, the arenas present several obstacles to theoretically amp the in-game chaos. Falling off the stage or colliding into spikes temporarily removes you from play while boost pads and bumpers help or hinder your movement.

The controls are about as straightforward as the rules. Gliding into the puck snatches it off the ground or dislodges it from an opponent’s grasp. When you control the puck, the right analogue stick aims, B/ZL allows for a charge shot, and A/ZR just flings it out there. Without the puck, your charge shot becomes a brake, and your normal shot now initiates a short dash.  This dash can knock back opponents and dislodge the puck at the cost of a significant but temporary speed decrease.

When you grow tired of pucking friends or computers, you can go solo in the game’s Challenge Mode or delve into the Arena Creator. Of the ten missions offered in Challenge Mode, five involve beating a team of computers, and the other five task you with other menial jobs. Based on your performance, you’re awarded medals or new color options for your teams. If you’re more inventive than you are skilled, the level editor could possibly extend ClusterPuck’s longevity.  However, take note: no matter how wonderfully you design your stage, you can still only play ClusterPuck on it.

What’s good?

  1. ClusterPuck’s strongest feature is its level design, and a solid arena can offer the opportunity for a fun match. It may sound awesome to have seven other people playing with you for local multiplayer, but friends don’t count for crap if the stage is awful. Bumpers, spikes, boost pads, and curved/few walls tend to make for good levels. Conversely, ClusterPuck’s self-proclaimed “Competitive” arenas put the “basic” in “basically garbage,” so much so that the creators themselves named a stage, “Boring.”
  2. The level editor is surprisingly fleshed out. Apart from some aesthetic components, you can create just about anything the developer could have made. That said, it can be a chore to change materials, and you can’t delete misplaced objects without erasing the floor as well.

An accurate recreation of Solomon at parties.

What’s bad?

  1. Beginning with the least egregious error, ClusterPuck looks and sounds dull. Rather than presenting any character, both the graphics and music seem like cookie-cutter assets bought from an online vendor. Aesthetic flair is sorely missed when trying to distinguish your puck from your teammates’. Your name and a simple symbol (like a pizza, a dot, or an ass) designate which puck is yours, but you’ll still lose track of yourself when the game’s namesake inevitably occurs.
  2. Roombas served as the main inspiration for ClusterPuck’s AI. The COMs follow a simple set of parameters. One will hang near the goal and orbit it based on the other team’s movements. The rest will rush the puck like a rabid crowd on Black Friday. If an enemy crosses their beeline to the puck, they dash. If the AI is against you, it can seize the puck from Death itself and guide it into your goal. If the AI is on your team, it will backstab you and score for the other side. This is how the robot uprising begins.
  3. Movement is slow and slippery. Your puck controls similarly to a hockey player, except that player is wearing grease-bottomed sneakers instead of skates. Because you’re limited to making wide turns, you’ll have very little ability to dodge or juke opponents. Because everyone moves at the same speed—regardless of whether you have the puck—players can have a clear shot at the goal if they get lucky and emerge from a dogpile unscathed. Braking could theoretically help with turning, but your acceleration is so lethargic, it’s best to ignore the function.
  4. ClusterPuck’s design choices fail to foster a solid competitive or casual multiplayer game. The game runs too slowly to ramp up any adrenaline, and the aforementioned floaty controls limit any skillful maneuvers. Passing and ricochet shots are so impractical that you’re better off just barreling the puck into the goal. Unreliable physics make dashing dangerous because a dash either sends an enemy flying or does absolutely nothing. Most matches devolve into everyone humping the puck until someone dislodges it and meanders over toward the goal. Whether I played with one other person or seven, ClusterPuck could not hold anyone’s interest for longer than a couple of games.

Contrary to what is written below, I did gain pleasure out of making this.

What’s the verdict?

Bad mechanics make for easier jokes, but I gain little pleasure in trashing ClusterPuck 99. No matter how severely I criticize the game, I imagine the developers attempted to produce the best experience they could offer. However, if this is the case, their best is currently not any better than another developer’s mediocre. ClusterPuck’s core concept could have made for a solid multiplayer experience, but its poor execution epitomizes the risk you take when buying obscure games from small-time studios.  In this case, you’re better sticking with the mainstream successes.

Arbitrary Statistics:

  • Score: 4.5
  • Time Played: Over 4 hours
  • Number of Players: 1-8
  • Games Like It on Switch: Rocket Fist, Rocket League

Scoring Policy

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Review, 0 comments
03
Jul
2018
Solomon Plays GoNNER – Episode 5 (Damnation)

Solomon Plays GoNNER – Episode 5 (Damnation)

The Slumpening

I launched my website with WordPress.com back in September 2017.  Although the “.com” version of WordPress offered fewer customization options compared to its “.org” brother, it did feature WordPress Reader.  Whenever you published an article, Reader would add it to a massive feed of all recent WordPress articles.  For new bloggers, this feed was their only source of traffic.  The Reader’s search function was also much more charitable than Google’s.  Even my rinky-dink website would pop up if someone searched the Nintendo Switch.

I subscribed to several other blogs during that time—most as small as mine—in an attempt to draw readers.  The “massage-my-feet-I’ll-massage-yours” mentality.  With the exception of the exceptional Seafoam Gaming, I didn’t particularly keep up with any of them, but it helped me to see how other amateur writers maintained their sites.  Due to my sadistic tendencies, I also gained a warped sense of pleasure when blogs stopped producing work.  Petty as it was, “outliving” another site supposedly meant my determination was stronger.

Then I hit my slump.  My eagle-eyed readers will notice this video has taken a little over two weeks to go live.  I recorded it on 6/6/18.  Any mathematician can deduce that this is a long time to publish a simple video, especially when I only need to write a few paragraphs to finish it.  I blame the slump.  For whatever reason, in this past month, writing has taken a little more motivation than I have been willing to excrete.  I have no intention of retiring Solomon Rambling, but I now empathize with those who have allowed their websites to stagnant.

Many pests can suck away your motivation.  Going into this, I knew I would largely be writing to myself, but then I had a taste of an audience with “the Girl in the Ground.”  After two days of over 50 views (madness, I tell you!), my viewer count crashed back to 3-4 views a week.  Losing these readers, I was bummed.  I do recognize my limited attempts to market my material has led to this, but I’m not eager to sell myself on social media.  Hell, I still have an unrealistic hope that some big-name internet person will find my website, love it, and transform me into the next teen heartthrob.

Apart from viewership, maintaining a website can suck the day away.  Ignoring the small site edits, I usually need at least four hours of labor to create my reviews/blogitorials.  Tweeting also drains my soul.  Thus, when the likes of Fortnite, Arena of Valor, and my telenovelas beg for my time, my Solomon Rambling costume collects dust.

A hobby which requires hard work does not always remain a hobby.  Some people don’t stick with their creative ventures, and that’s okay.  For now, I will complain about my lethargy, but I won’t be dozing for long.  When I make it past this hump, I’ll be better for it, ready for more humping in the future.

As always, if you have tips, stories, or suggestive comments, I’ll eat ‘em up.

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Video, 0 comments
23
Jun
2018
Gorogoa

Gorogoa

A Priceless Triumph

Some art reaches perfection by slow cooker. J. R. R. Tolkien spent 12 years writing the 4000+-page monstrosity that is the Lord of the Rings, which has come to define fantasy. Richard Linklater filmed his movie, Boyhood, over the same number of years to capture the literal development of its central character, and the movie is hailed as one of the greatest this century. Duke Nukem Forever ate through 15 years of production before it finally hit shelves, and critics and players have heralded it as the greatest game to suck ass ever. Now, we have Gorogoa, meticulously crafted by Jason Roberts over seven years. Like my first two examples, all of those years have amounted to a gaming masterpiece.

Typically, for a game that scores this highly, I have thrown out my standard review format and gone with a Top 10 of some sort. However, unlike Super Mario Odyssey and BotW, Gorogoa has not received the same universal praise, suffering criticisms namely for its length and price. Many have been hesitant to pay $15 for a game that can be completed in less than two hours, especially in this age when free-to-play content can offer tens of hours of entertainment. Thus, my aim here is not to critique Gorogoa but to deliver a counter-argument to the criticisms levied against one of the best games of this generation.

Beware. There be spoilers. If you trust me, buy the game because it’s best enjoyed with no prior knowledge (like Night in the Woods). If you don’t trust me, good for you: older male strangers on the internet can be dangerous, especially if they’re encouraging you to do something inappropriate.

What is it?

Gorogoa theoretically belongs to the puzzle genre, but it challenges you more intuitively than it does intellectually. You are presented with a grid which can contain four pictures at once. Like cel animation, these pictures can be layered on top of each other to create one image or be separated into multiple scenes. Each picture contains a piece of the puzzle and story, and you can zoom in or scroll an individual scene. The overall puzzle comes from correctly positioning the images next to each other or overlaying them to progress the story.

I bet you’re just about as confused as I am with what I wrote. Gorogoa is difficult to capture with either still images or written descriptions. Its living pictures create an ever-moving narrative which challenges your spatial reasoning abilities. For an example that’s been done to death, one situation finds you with three pictures:  a crow in a tree, a room with framed paintings, and a boy on a roof with a bowl resting on a surface beside him. To progress the story, you will focus in on the bowl as well as one of the framed pictures of an apple in a tree. If assembled in the way pictured below, the images will match seamlessly, causing the crow to leave, thereby displacing an apple from the branch into the bowl.

To match the mind-spasming pictures, Gorogoa presents a mysterious, fractured narrative of one man’s life. The beginning of the game will introduce you to him as a boy as he encounters a massive seahorse-like dragon. He sets out to collect various colored objects for what appears to be a peace offering to the beast. As you guide him in collecting these objects, you will encounter four other time periods, including one in which the young boy is now an old man. The city ages with him, presenting both destruction and reconstruction. This world constitutes a greater puzzle overall, challenging you to interpret the meaning behind the protagonist’s actions.

What’s utterly fantastic?

  1. The art and sound are stunning. Everything is hand-drawn, and it’s the good kind, not some kindergartener’s excuse for achievement. Each image is crisp and allows for layers of detail, which is vital as you magnify specific objects. The sound design is minimalistic but atmospheric, brewing a mysterious tone without steering focus away from the imagery. In one image, we see a close-up of the monster’s eye, and once it moves, a horn trills eerily. Split-second moments like this—combining startling imagery with sound—manage to unsettle the audience.
  2. The puzzles stand among the most inventive I have ever experienced. Gorogoa offers a moderate challenge, but the satisfaction of finding a solution comes not from the difficulty but from the unexpected optical illusions you must manipulate. The sun is a crank; a head becomes a coin; and broken objects lead to new worlds. Fans of Monument Valley will certainly squeal over this one.
  3. Gorogoa delivers a poignant tale of a man’s search for meaning in the wake of destruction. Themes include powerlessness, despair, spirituality, healing, nothingness, and the absurd. Remarkably, Jason Roberts manages to convey these themes without using any text or dialogue; his imagery provides everything. Kotaku’s Chris Kohler has written a lovely article on Roberts, Gorogoa, and its story for those who are interested in more details.

What’s been criticized?

  1. The game is short. As I stated, your first play-through shouldn’t take longer than two hours, and subsequent play-throughs may end in under an hour. Because the game mechanics are so enticing, I understand why people want more, but brevity is important here. Harlan Ellison’s short story, “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” could be extended into a full novel, but part of the genius behind the story is how much character, lore, and imagery Ellison manages to compact in a meager word count. Gorogoa similarly triumphs by delivering surprising puzzle themes at quick pace, allowing them to leave a mark without growing stale. The chapters may have been stronger if they were of equal length (hence my 0.5 deduction), but this is a small gripe given the quality of the content.  Some have also complained that Gorogoa has little replay value. This critique is peculiar to me, considering the large majority of puzzle games don’t have much replay value. You can’t “unknow” a solution, unless you’re especially forgetful or are willing to head-bang a cinderblock. That said, Gorogoa entices repeated play-throughs, not only to better understand the story but to show off the remarkable content to others.
  2. Puzzles can devolve to aimless mixing and matching until you find the solution. Admittedly, I even moved tiles around randomly when I felt stuck, but I don’t label this a fault in the game’s design. Perhaps our observational skills are lacking. Unlike other puzzles, Gorogoa challenges you to attend to specific details and be aware of how seemingly incongruent pieces can interlock. Because we are not used to this kind of problem-solving, we inherently miss clues. Solutions never reduce to the absurdity of point-and-click combinations (a la King’s Quest), and when pieces did connect, it made sense. It can be frustrating to not understand a brain teaser, but that doesn’t always mean the game is at fault.
  3. The narrative is difficult to understand and, as such, alienates players. Gorogoa does not present a simple story, and it took me three play-throughs to feel like I had a good grasp on what it tries to convey. Not all tales are easily understood, and numerable pieces of fine literature benefit from complex symbols and hidden meanings. Not everyone will enjoy Gorogoa’s narrative, just like not everyone will enjoy House of Leaves or Grendel, and that’s fine. For those who do not want to analyze Gorogoa, the story can be left an unfinished puzzle about a boy, a dragon, some old dude, and colored balls. For those who want something more, there is much to interpret and ponder. Neither play approach is better, but it’s not the game’s fault if you don’t understand it.

What’s the verdict?

Much more could be said about Gorogoa, but I have already exceeded what is typical of a long review for me. If I haven’t made it already apparent, Gorogoa is a must-play. Fifteen bucks may be a steep asking price for many of you, especially if you have a tight budget, but if this is the case, I recommended grabbing it from on iOS where it is a buck. The Switch version is ideal because you can enjoy it on the big screen or play through it with touch controls. Just play it; experience it. Gorogoa exemplifies art in video games and quality gaming.

Arbitrary Statistics:

  • Score: 9.5
  • Time Played: Over 3 hours
  • Number of Players: 1
  • Games Like It on Switch: FRAMED Collection, Inside

Scoring Policy

Posted by Solomon Rambling in Review, 0 comments