Gorogoa is a work of art. While some games use cool combat mechanics to pull you in, Gorogoa creates a unique visual style and format that entices you to delve into its story. This is a relatively short game, but it uses its pictures to tell thousands of words.
There is no written or spoken dialogue in Gorogoa. You’ll need to absorb the information expressed in its pictures and through its gameplay.
If you’re looking for a game to fill an evening or an afternoon, try out Gorogoa. It is sure to leave you pondering, and you may even need a second playthrough to understand it all.
Gorogoa’s Gameplay
Gorogoa is a pretty trippy game. It creates a totally unique way to tell a story that I’ve never seen before. If you’re looking for just one reason to play Gorogoa, it’s this. You won’t find a game that plays like this anywhere else.
In Gorogoa, you’ll follow a young boy who sees a mythical beast, presumably the titular Gorogoa. The game follows the boy’s mystical quest to retrieve five orbs and summon Gorogoa.
This quest has you solving visual puzzles to send the boy on his quest. Gorogoa features a two-by-two grid which can hold four pictures. These different pictures can then be manipulated, explored, and changed.
Some images will only show you a small portion of the scene at a time. You can use direction buttons on the grid to focus on different parts of the scene or click an object to zoom in. Once you’ve done this, you can move one image to match with another in your grid to form a larger scene. This can cause the boy to move from place to place.
This scene manipulation is just one fantastic element of Gorogoa’s visual gameplay. You’ll find that scenes can create other scenes. Oftentimes a scene that features an object can be moved to another grid space, leaving the object behind to create a new image. Sometimes one frame can depict something on every grid space if you move it to see the whole picture.
The Story of Gorogoa
Gorogoa is a piece of art that deserves to be understood, and I can’t help but try to explain it. If you want to experience Gorogoa for yourself first, this is your chance to remain unspoiled. However, if you would like to experience Gorogoa with some guidance, this is your opportunity to dive in.
Simply put, Gorogoa tells the story of one boy across various stages of his life. The boy’s quest to gather the five fruits to offer the Gorogoa sees him literally travel through different periods of his future. The biggest reveal of Gorogoa, near the end of the game, is that all the characters seen through the game have been the same boy.
The story of the boy’s life actually starts at the end of the game where the boy’s youthful quest ends in a dangerous fall. The next phase of the boy’s life deals with recovery from his tragedy. Following that, the game sees the boy gain knowledge and grow as a person. As an older adult in the penultimate phase of his life, the boy turns to religion, traumatized by war and tragedy. In the final phase of the boy’s life, he reflects on his life now as an old man and reconnects with his younger self. Then, the divine beast he chased as a boy appears and the old man disappears in a beam of light, passing on.
The Themes of Gorogoa
Gorogoa is a game about war and religion. These themes are layered into the game and featured throughout the phases of the boy’s life. It’s worth noting that the entire premise of Gorogoa is the boy’s mystical pilgrimage through his own future.
Gorogoa has a lot to take in. Some sections of this game are dark and show the boy in despair. Many of the landscapes you will see are actually recurring and go through various states of destruction or reconstruction. However, there is always something better around the corner, and in many cases, the player changes the scene in a way that will help the boy.
While war and religion are two of the most prominent themes in Gorogoa, they are not the only ones. There is more to uncover, understand, and feel in Gorogoa, and more themes to get lost in. You may even find that more than one divine creature that haunts the panels of Gorogoa’s gameplay.
Gathering the Orbs
While Gorogoa’s story is about a man’s journey through his life, like all wonderful art, Gorogoa has multiple layers and meanings. There are many ways to interpret this game since it seems to involve a time loop. Is the game more about the boy, or about the old man? Is it about neither? Is the journey actually happening, or is it a metaphor?
Gorogoa uses one boy’s journey through his life to explore different themes. With every fruit, a different stage of the boy’s life is explored, but each picture used puts different stages of that life into conversation with each other.
Take the journey for the blue fruit, for example. In this section, the boy travels through the pictures hanging in his apartment as an old man. To advance through the old man’s pictures, you’ll need the help of the young adult and the older adult. The young adult has books that depict religious rituals but with a piece missing. The older adult has religious artifacts that show his engagement with these religious rites.
In this section, the younger man has studied, but the older man has experienced. Only with the two brought together can the boy advance to an old man. In short, only the conjunction of religious knowledge and religious experience can lead to understanding or enlightenment.
Gorogoa uses its visual media to skillfully put the various sections of the boy’s life into conversation with each other. In the end, however, some messages speak louder than words. This quest for the blue orb ends when the older adult destroys the table with his religious relics.
Embark on a Pilgrimage with Gorogoa
Gorogoa is a work of art that will have you pondering its story long after. The story is rich, and each playthrough feels like it offers more exploration of the themes within it. I rate Gorogoa a 7 out of 10. If you’re looking to fill an afternoon or an evening with a pilgrimage for understanding, look no further than Gorogoa.
