Through its characters, its designer, and its player, Gorogoa keeps an outsider's perspective in a present state of mind. Straightforward action—shifting panels and considering different points of view—doesn't preclude logical twists or emotional complexity. In only a couple hours, Gorogoa creates a window into a daydream and a companion to despair.
Behind the eyes of its characters, Gorogoa is a wistful reflection of untaught imagination, the erosion of possibility, and the recovery of passion. For its player, Gorogoa is a mechanical exercise in shifting perspectives and a clever prompt for tests of logic. For its creator, Gorogoa is a five year journey through the perils of designing his first videogame. Three distinct narratives converge together, which is an apt spectacle for a game concerned with peering through windows. Everyone is on the outside, looking in.
Gorogoa begins with a single pane of artwork; a colorful monster roosts in a city as a boy looks out a window. The boy walks away, but the player inevitably clicks on the window and drags it to the side. Now there are two panes. One for the clear view of the city, and one with the boy exiting a nearby closet. The city view zooms toward the center, revealing a door. The player drags the city pane over the closet pane and, magic, the boy exits his closet door and walks into the city. Soon there are there panes. Eventually there can be four, revealing the extent of Gorogoa’s premise; shift perspective and affect the environment.
While Gorogoa revels in simplicity, its tasks and progression demand a keen eye and a close attention to detail. Four panes, and multiple levels and objects within those panes, are ripe with opportunity. Generally you’re intended to perform actions that direct the boy, through either abstract or plain direction, to collect a piece of fruit. Obtaining each piece sends the player through a winding medley of logic and reasoning. Like many point-and-click adventure games, you could also probably brute force your way through Gorogoa, but it’s neither obtuse nor arcane enough to send you away to look at a guide.
Instead, Gorogoa operates through cursive dream logic. It’s designed to exist in the moment and in line with its elaborate train of thought. A radial heat thermometer may double as the second hand of a giant clock. A spindled yellow star may be a sun in one panel and a gear mechanism in another. Gorogoa emphasizes a tacit relationship between its active objects, nudging the player to think about the presented variables and act to the best of their intuition.
The visual process of solving Gorogoa is nothing short of mesmerizing. Shifting panes around and watching them seamlessly combine often produces an oh shit that worked sensation of astonishment. Zooming in on objects and expanding their own detail is akin to staring at a snow globe and imagining functioning city behind the façade. Only in Gorogoa it’s there, and it’s waiting. Technically speaking, it’s also a really neat special effect not present in other perspective-adjacent games like Echochrome or Monument Valley. Gorogoa seeks to play with perspective rather than a static point-of-view.
Equally stunning is Gorogoa’s hand-drawn, animated art. Solving puzzles often pushes objects and characters in a pane into action. Seeing Gorogoa in motion reminded me of the illustrated books my mother would read to me when I was a child. I could almost feel the worn paper of those books every time I looked at a new set of panels in Gorogoa. While Neverending Nightmares and Cuphead were constructed under similar guidelines, neither seems to have the familiar touch of Gorogoa. Perhaps this sentiment is unique to my perspective, but it’s doubtful anyone can look at Gorogoa’s synthesis of art, technology, and style and feels as if it’s been done before.
There’s also a profound sadness to the implicit story tucked inside of Gorogoa. The entire process is wordless and left entirely to interpretation, but it’s possible to glean personal themes and narrative from watching it unfold. An injured man in a wheelchair contemplates a different future. A boy falls into darkness. That same boy, on crutches, watches a city burn. It’s hard not to see a young man exhausted, with his face down on a desk, and not think of the years Roberts spent putting Gorogoa together, and the characters he got to know when setting them in motion.
While Gorogoa was designed, drawn, and constructed by Roberts, Joel Corelitz created the game’s composition. Its synth-heavy combination piano keys, droning ambiance, and the occasional bell. The subdued soundtrack compliments Gorogoa’s solemn performance, rising and falling with action and rarely escaping the player’s grasp. Neither the game nor the soundtrack would be better off independently.
Gorogoa captures the wonder and jubilation of idealism. It also shows what happens when the dream catches up with reality and the walls start closing in. Watching hope fade before it is ultimately restored is a single way to understand what happens in Gorogoa, but, like any admired piece of art, is open a personal interpretation. I saw the characters as they related to myself and my past experiences, and I tried to think about what it took to build Gorogoa. It’s three perspectives in one game, and the real magic is those thoughts and responses might be different for every player.
Through its characters, its designer, and its player, Gorogoa keeps an outsider’s perspective in a present state of mind. Straightforward action—shifting panels and considering different points of view—doesn’t preclude logical twists or emotional complexity. In only a couple hours, Gorogoa creates a window into a daydream and a companion to despair.
