Jesus, this is pretty. Gorogoa is a puzzle game, built on some interesting layer manipulation and viewpoint mechanics, but the first thing that's going to strike you is the beautiful art. It's hand drawn in a heavily detailed style, which really requires more looking at than you're likely to do while solving the puzzles. I might have to find out if the art is available somewhere separate. I see a desktop background coming.
There is a slight downside in that the pencil art can only support simple animation, such as translation or colour changes. At least without much more work. This means that when more complex movements are required, such as the main character walking around, it drops into a rougher, slightly 90s looking animation, which is unfortunately a bit obvious. Still, it really doesn't make much difference.
Now, onto the puzzles. The game is built around panels, with a 2x2 grid, within which 4 panels can be moved, layered, zoomed or combined, to allow movement from one panel to another, or allow interacting of mechanisms between panels. This requires some occasionally twisty thinking, with the ability to recognise where doors may fit into frames, or how background scenery can slot together to allow long transition scenes. This can actually result in needing some fairly swift movements, although it's never punishing.
You'll find yourself zooming into or out of fractal worlds, going into buildings, artworks, windows, geometric patterns, horrifying scenes of war, and cushions. Each layer has a different environment, with layers of stories built onto them.
The game does a reasonable job of teaching you the mechanics, ramping up the difficulty from very simple to brain-twistingly complex over the length of the game, although I did find myself rather frustrated at one point, as a new method of manipulating frames wasn't quite explained. The game is friendly in that it provides you with in-game hints, but you may need to learn a degree of patience. It's also a bit dissatisifying to be tinkering and find you've solved the puzzle by accident, so make sure you always know why you're doing what you're doing.
There is a story hidden in here, but it's told in a very oblique manner. Play close attention if you want to work out what's going on. And it's told very sparingly, as the game clocks in at under two hours. I'd have enjoyed more puzzles, but I can see it being tricky to avoid turning that into either a grindfest of relatively simple turn-handle processes, or so multi-stepped that it would be near impossible to maintain interest throughout. And introducing additional puzzle types is not going to be easy, given how simple the design is (with good reason).
Absolutely worth a play for any puzzle fans.
Highly recommended.
Tagged: Game Puzzle 2D Easy difficulty PC