Gorogoa
Review

Gorogoa (2017) is a puzzle game where you rearrange and resize tiles to make a singular picture. It appears to be simple, but to solve the puzzles you need to play close attention to how they interrelate. This Matryoshka Russian-Doll puzzle combines with beautiful hand-drawn artwork to tell an abstract story of loss, loneliness, spirituality and religion.

You play a young boy, seeking an encounter with a divine being. It is set in the 20^th century, and explores the time around the World Wars and other conflicts. In the puzzles and scenes you see the slow rebuilding of life that occurred afterwards. You become an old man and are able to reflect on these events and how they shaped your life as you lived through them in your youth.

Each level is a 4 by 4 grid, where you are given 3 or 4 seemingly unconnected pictures. But by moving the pictures from one grid box to another, and resizing them so that they only feature a select part of the image, you find that they do in fact interrelate and create a single image that then comes to life, revealing new meaning and purpose not present in any single component image.

Its unique approach to storytelling and novel game mechanics, paired with its artistic imagery, make it a unique offering and make it stand out from other similar puzzle games.

Our examiner, Ben Kendall, first checked Gorogoa 2 years ago. It was re-examined by Andy Robertson and updated 8 weeks ago.