[h1][b]Strongly recommended:[/b] GRIS[/h1]
If you're an indie developer, it seems there's an unwritten rule that at least one of your games has to be either an emotionally charged, allegorical adventure or platformer, or a hyper-violent, surreal action game. Nomada Studio seem to have gone with the former, bringing us [b]GRIS[/b], a story of love, loss, and the pain that inevitably comes with them.
The game follows Gris, a young girl dealing with the death of a loved one. Navigating her fractured world, with the levels representing the different stages of grief, Gris will slowly learn new abilities as she figures out how to move forward from her painful experience.
Gris's journey is presented as a wordless, allegorical experience, with minimal UI and intuitive controls. As such, it works as a beautifully haunting meditation of grief, depression, and acceptance.
This is helped in no small part by the stunning art direction. The gorgeous watercolor graphics and hand-drawn animations create an incredibly detailed and evocative world for Gris to traverse. And while there's virtually no voice acting, the sound effects and ambient music play perfectly with the game's somber tone.
The level design is another strong suit. Throughout the game, the environments are crafted so they provide a consistent level of challenge, while still being simple enough to navigate intuitively. Each level is themed around the new ability you can unlock, with the puzzles design asking you to leverage this new ability while combining it with the ones you already have.
However, not everything is perfect. There are a couple of elements that work to the game's detriment, both of which, I think, stem from the expectations and conventions of this being a game on Steam.
The first has to do with ambiguity. While it isn't immediately apparent that it's the death of someone close to Gris that sets the events of the game in motion, this does become clear as the game goes along. However, we aren't really told who this person is to Gris.
You could argue that it doesn't really matter - the game works as a broad allegory for grief caused by a loved one's passing, and as such, the specifics of the relationship aren't that important. And I would tend to agree, if the answer wasn't actually included in the game and locked behind a series of collectibles.
Which brings us to the second pain point - achievements and collectibles. Throughout the game, you can find memory fragments Gris can collect. Collecting them all unlocks the "secret ending", giving you a short cutscene that contextualizes the events of the game by letting you know who exactly it is that Gris is mourning.
Hiding such a vital piece of information behind optional collectibles strikes me as a very odd choice. I would compare it to Journey - there, you also have collectibles in the form of cloth fragments, but these are actually completely optional since they only influence the gameplay, and not the story.
And I get that this is probably just me, but if you put collectibles and achievements in a game I'm playing, it's damn near guaranteed to light up that part of the monkey brain that screams "must get all the shinies". I think I would much prefer if Gris went a completely different route, eliminating collectibles and achievements altogether, and I could just immerse myself in the experience without feeling the pressure to consult a guide so I can 100% it.
Even so, GRIS has more than enough going for it to deserve a definite recommendation. While it may not pack quite the same emotional punch as Journey or To the Moon, it's still an exceptionally well-crafted game, with such a universal subject you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone that won't be able to relate.
