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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: Buried Signal/Annapurna Interactive Released: December 14, 2017 Requirements: Windows XP, SP 2 Processor: 1 GHtz Memory: 512 MB RAM Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 6 or AMD Radeon X1000 DirectX: 9.0c Storage: 680 MB available space
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By flotsam Gorogoa Buried Signal / Annapurna Interactive Four little illustrated panels never came together so good. Seemingly simple in appearance yet devilishly clever in construction, this is a two by two grid of lavishly drawn pictures. A combination of pencils and watercolours, they are pretty in themselves. What they do together is almost magical. Gorogoa came out a while back and passed me by at the time. I don’t recall how it came to my attention now, but I am glad that it did. You start with a glimpse of a creature, seen through a window by a small boy. Intrigued, a book sets him on a (what seems to be) a life long quest of discovery. Off you go. Your journey begins with the image moving to the top left of the previously mentioned grid, followed by your inquisitive clicking. What you will discover is that the image can be manipulated, pulled apart to reveal something underneath or combined and layered with another to create something else. Slide part of it to elsewhere on the grid, slide other images back. A door might be entered, a stairway moved to gain access elsewhere, a bouncing ball coerced into following the path dynamically laid out for it. Tease and pull and poke and combine, and watch and think. And maybe do it again. Perspective matters. As does point of view. It is dreamy and surreal, a tad Alice through the looking-glass, energising and soothing at the same time. It is also incredibly well designed. There is an immediate objective, and you can discern a way through, even if it requires a bit of trial and error at times. It takes some pondering, but I never felt that I was randomly clicking; the right way was always just over there, and I was just a short moment away from discovering it. Logic will prevail, and the confined nature of the grid contains almost any sense of frustration. The illustrations are evocative, the level of detail in some scenes reminiscent of the most elaborate children’s story book. There is whimsy going on, accompanied by ambient sound and a meditative soundtrack, but no spoken word. It took me just over three hours. It might take you less. Describing it doesn’t do its complex simplicity justice. A puzzling delight. I played on: OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB
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