GRIS
Gris is a light puzzle-platformer from developer Nomada Studios that perfectly serves up heavy themes in one bite-sized, animated portion. Through thoughtful story telling, evocative sound design, and striking visual presentation Gris wants us to overcome the monsters we make. While keeping its themes of grief and loss at a safe and digestible distance, players set out on a hopeful journey to find their voice and restore color to a blank world.
The game begins as a nameless protagonist awakes sitting in the palm of a giant stone statue. Deep cracks run through the statue’s fingers, and our protagonist begins to sing. Their voice is beautiful and angelic, but suddenly, it disappears. As she struggles to speak, the cracks in the great stone hand fissure and our protagonist falls down to a desolate plane below, voiceless. This opening cinematic is sure to sweep players off their feet. Gris’ animated hand-drawn art style is a delight to take in. Its mix of watercolor and fine-line details dazzle as the score swells, the opening credits roll, and our protagonist descends through color and sound.
Once players are given control, the world is a void, blank slate. Every color has vanished from your surroundings and our protagonist won’t move unless you help her. The initial platforming controls here are purposefully simple. Using the joystick, players can sluggishly drag one foot in front of the other, and sit down. That’s it. That’s all Gris will allow you to do at its onset. It establishes a lack of control and mobility, but not in the same way other platformers do. Most every platformer starts with the bare minimum ability to jump, and as you progress you gain all the typical power ups to achieve and build upon. Gris eventually gets to this progression, but not before making players work through their grief first.
Rather than simply starting at square one, the game starts at zero. After its emotional introduction, it further establishes a sense of loss with a total lack of basic control and mobility. The protagonist is depressed. You’re unable to jump in and play because your character is still processing what just happened. Developer, Nomada Studio, doubles down on the story motivating the player’s actions, which is very necessary. The gameplay, while it does grow over time, is a fairly typical platforming affair. Players will move side to side, jump, and gain more mobility over time. Thankfully, because of Nomada’s emphasis on story, they don’t need to reinvent the wheel too much on gameplay. Where they do choose to innovate, however, is in building tension without the use of death.
Death, in video games, is often used to build suspense through consequences. Do this, and you fail. But, Gris won’t kill you. As a protective measure for players, you cannot die in this game. Gris is a journey through grief and self-discovery, which can be a topic that hits a little too close to home for some. This is why Nomada Studio makes the empathetic choice of never letting anything physically harm your character. This is a safe view of serious themes. Yet, without the ability to die, how do they keep players invested in the action sequences? When a terrifying creature made of darkness, of which there are several, stands in your way, why should you be afraid if it can’t hurt you? Incredibly, Gris’ art and sound design do more than enough to make you forget both its delicate themes and your invincibility.
Gris always pairs evocative sound cues with its more epically drawn setpieces. This, combined with increasingly clever platforming challenges managed to produce a genuine sense of danger and tension despite never being able to actually fail. Even when the game puts you on-rails, they give you just enough control to feel like your actions will affect the outcome. For something that is literally advertised as “an experience free of danger,” it will fool you. What’s more, is that these beasts and behemoths you’re facing cannot hurt you because they are simply parts of you that must be confronted.
The quality character choices keep on coming as Nomada Studio also ties together player progression and environmental design. Not only do you have no abilities to start with, but the world you inhabit has nearly nothing in it. You stand alone on a desolate plane, portrayed simply as a black line on a white background. The game’s world is meant to be a physical representation of what’s happening to the protagonist mentally, so the more despondent they are, the emptier the level. There are only hints of life in the beginning. The wind whistles aimlessly as a light fog blows by, but as our hero grows, so too does the world.
Every game gets harder the farther you advance, but rarely is that choice so well-motivated. In Gris, when players reach the end of a level, part of our character’s voice comes back. When they speak, a new color washes over the previously blank world. With each color that is restored, the levels evolve. What were once aimless lines have become trees in full bloom. Where only dust blew in the wind, now leaves gently fall. We’re able to hear birds and bugs lightly chirping in the brush. The art style and sound design flourish as players get to see physical manifestations of growth and get to take on new platforming and puzzle challenges.
Gris embraces the “show don’t tell” doctrine in its puzzle design. Players will often be subtly introduced to upcoming obstacles as you enter a level. The tops of trees mysteriously change shape. Platforms overhead disappear and reappear. This foreshadowing includes hints to the answers of some puzzles, but it’s never too obvious. Nomada Studio gracefully teaches its players what to expect and how to approach it, without fully diminishing its own difficulty. Which is a relief, since the game itself is quite short.
With a runtime of only four to six hours, Gris feels like it could have been longer. You can finish it in a single playthrough, and barely miss anything. There are some collectibles cunningly squirreled away, which added a nice extra challenge. Finding them and actually reaching them often yielded new and more difficult puzzles to solve. Granted, beyond these moments, their impact on the game itself is seldom noticed.
Other than vague and seemingly purposeless collectibles, Gris knocks it out of the park on all fronts. The art style is a feast for the eyes, while the soundtrack will steal your heart and lift your spirits. The platforming and puzzle-solving may be a little light on challenge, but they always left a sense of accomplishment. When the story reaches its climax, it may leave you wanting more, but you won’t feel like anything was missing. Gris plays like a good book, so save it for a rainy day and a hot cup of tea.
VERDICT: Play This Game
