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Gorogoa is a beautiful puzzle game that focuses on great art, powerful storytelling, and emotional music. Its art-based approach to puzzles and gameplay provides a totally unique experience that's like nothing else on the market
Gorogoa is an incredibly unique game that's totally unlike any other puzzle game on the market. In Gorogoa, you pinch, zoom, and slide pictures to solve a number of puzzles that revolve around collecting colored fruits. The act of pinching, zooming, and sliding serves as both a way for you to explore the beautiful, evocative artwork in Gorogoa and to solve the puzzles themselves. You can match two pictures side-by-side or vertically to allow a character or object to move between scenes, lift objects from a scene to form a new image, or drop an image on top of another one to allow a character or object to pass through an opening and create a new tableau.
The resulting gameplay is equal parts exploration and problem-solving. In Gorogoa, your first approach to any problem usually involves plenty of time scrolling around the artwork and appreciating the intricate details. You'll find lots of opportunities to interact with images, reposition things, and manipulate the game's four panels in new ways to produce an entirely fresh set of images. Making progress won't always be fast, but the task of fiddling around and figuring out what you need to do to solve the puzzle is wonderful and enjoyable on its own.
Gorogoa has a handful of clever tricks that it uses to keep its unique, almost alien gameplay approachable. For starters, a plethora of sound and music cues give you hints when you're on the right track. The music remains somber and moody while you're exploring fruitlessly, lifting up into powerful melodies stuffed full of emotion when you begin to manipulate the right elements. The game also features lots of parallel puzzles, ensuring that once you've figured out a trick you'll get to use it several times in short succession to reach your in-game goals. Finally, a hint mode adds small rings around interactable elements when you first load a picture. These hints won't tell you how to solve puzzles. Instead, they tell you what your tools are so you can begin trying various combinations and move towards your objectives.
Gorogoa is not a long game. It's difficult enough that you should get an hour or three out of it if you avoid spoilers and walkthroughs. The middle section of the game is significantly more difficult than the beginning or end, meaning you're likely to encounter a bit of frustration once you've settled into the game. That said, the fundamental experience of exploring the game and experimenting with solutions is quite fun, so you're far less likely to be tempted to perform online research than you might be with other games. Completing the game is totally worth it in terms of story payoff, so if you do decide that you're totally stuck it's definitely worth looking up a walkthrough so you can finish the game.
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If you're stuck in Gorogoa, try turning up the music and turning on hints before you go looking for spoilers. The in-game hints highlight interactable objects with a glowing ring, while the music will generally reveal if you're on the right track for solving a puzzle. Neither of these things will spoil anything for you, so you'll still get the satisfaction of figuring out the puzzle on your own. They will, however, substantially reduce the problem space and enable you to quickly determine if your solutions make meaningful progress or if you're just treading water.
One additional thing to consider is that many of the game's later puzzles feature timing elements. These tend to be quite lenient, giving you plenty of time to leisurely hook things up before the window of opportunity closes, but some of them are strict enough that you'll need forethought and some quick fingers. If it seems like you're just barely missing the timing to solve the puzzle, chances are that you are. Reset things to give yourself another window and try to set up the solution beforehand as much as you can. With a bit of practice, you'll nail the challenge and be able to collect the next fruit.
Gorogoa gives you lots of hints about the solutions to upcoming puzzles via dialogue bubbles and foreshadowing. When the character has a thought in the form of a pictogram, do your best to remember the image displayed in the bubble. This will be a powerful hint that will guide you toward the next solution. If elements in the images you're viewing share the same iconography used in the speech bubble, you're almost certainly on the right track.
Similarly, once you've used a technique to solve a puzzle, expect that same technique to show up later. You'll usually use the technique again in very short succession and then again after a bit of a delay. Try to match ideas on the screen with solutions you've explored previously and you'll be able to blow through several of the game's puzzles in no time at all.
If a panel moves or gets modified, don't forget to re-explore that panel's art before you move on! In many cases, you'll find a new object to interact with or a new avenue to explore. Don't assume that an object that you've lifted from a panel stays boring, either. Remember to zoom in and out on lifted posters, frames, and other objects in order to find fresh art that you can mine for solutions to your current puzzle.
Finally, remember that Gorogoa is a game that needs time to rest and ruminate. Getting stuck isn't necessarily a bad thing. Try taking a bit of time away from the game to reflect on the story and gameplay before returning. In a lot of cases, a quick walk will give you the additional insight or patience you need to find the solution to the puzzle you're stuck on. If it doesn't, you can always Google after a few more minutes of poking around.
Are you a Gorogoa fan? Which chapter was your favorite? What did you think of the game's story? Did we miss any tips or tricks? Let us know in the comments below!
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