Your world shatters and sends you falling into an endless desert. You find yourself surrounded by infinite sand and brutal winds of emotion that you must push on through. Gris, Devolver Digital’s somber platformer, begins as a woman has to navigate the brutal whiplashes of wind and wilderness. Without instruction, they must learn to navigate various environments and challenges to try and find their destination.
Silent Beauty
Gris’ strengths lie in its presentation and atmosphere. A story told without speaking. Players must discern from the opening moments what is going on within the mind of the nameless protagonist as she explores the sprawling and gorgeous environments that she is thrown into during the game’s opening moments.
The game is able to focus on a meditative tone. Allowing players to absorb the beauty of the environment and music. Gris’ environments are varied, each more enthralling than the last. Initially cast into a black-and-white desert, the game uses scale and atmosphere to draw players in before they begin unlocking the colors of the world and new environments. It takes some time for the game to start showing its hand. It then unveils a gorgeous artistic representation of emotional pain and recovery.
Beauty in Simplicity
Gris’ gameplay opts for simplicity similar to its atmospheric presentation, with basic controls to guide its platforming. With only movement controls and a simple jump command for players to work with at the start, they are forced to navigate the world with a limited toolset as they try to figure out the mechanics of the game. In a clever extension of the game’s themes, players are forced to try and figure out their path through the game and how to navigate its mechanics in much the same way that the path to healing is often unclear.
The mechanics unveiled as the game continues to offer a deceptive depth as players gain additional abilities by acquiring stars offered up at alters to create gorgeous constellations. These stars are the key to finding alternate paths through the world, as the anonymous woman you play can use them to form hard light constructs that can be used as bridges and pathways to reach previously unreachable locations.
In addition to these hard light paths, the woman uses her revealed abilities to navigate complex physics and platforming puzzles. The capabilities include making herself into a block to smash the environment and weather storms or glide across wider gaps.
Relative Results
Rating a game like Devolver Digital’s Gris is difficult as the player reaction will likely vary drastically from player to player. Some players will find the quiet slow gameplay refreshing and intriguing as the game’s beauty, if unveiled and explored. Others might find it to be too slow to show where it is going finding themselves bored as a result. For me, the game worked incredibly well. Take time to watch the trailer below and consider for yourself if this is the type of game for you.
