What It's Like To Play Gorogoa

August 6, 2013 7:04 AM

That is, perhaps, the most striking thing about Gorogoa - the potential it reveals for creating in a computer game the sort of puzzle that would be all but impossible in a physical medium. The interaction of the tiles with one another is complex and often unexpected. There are times when a sharp-eyed player can see the way forward simply by looking for congruency or potential points of contrast, but often those opportunities only reveal themselves as you play with the tiles.

Gorogoa is a game in development by Jason Roberts (demo available on the website) which won the Visual Design Award at IndieCade 2012.

What It's Like To Play is a series of articles that attempts to describe games to 'reasonably intelligent adults familiar with the basics of video game systems, but with no prior experience actually playing them'. Other articles in the series: Planescape: Torment, Team Fortress 2, and Waking Mars.

posted by smcg (23 comments total)

Graphics look amazing. Hopefully the Windows zipfile contains something that Java can run on any platform.
posted by DU at 7:08 AM on August 6, 2013

Wow, that looks really, really awesome. I will be playing this tonight!

So cool.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 7:20 AM on August 6, 2013

What It's Like To Play is a series of articles that attempts to describe games to 'reasonably intelligent adults familiar with the basics of video game systems, but with no prior experience actually playing them'.

Was. Sadly, Culture Ramp is no more.
posted by Smart Dalek at 7:33 AM on August 6, 2013

I got it to run on Ubuntu by downloading the Windows demo, unzipping it, going to the Gorogoa/run directory and typing this in a terminal (it's from the .bat file):

~/Desktop/Gorogoa/run$ java -Xmx1024M -jar Gorogoa.jar

I can see why everybody is so excited about it. However, the whole game window flashes to white intermittently, it's very uncomfortable to play. Does anybody know how to make it run more smoothly?
posted by kandinski at 7:43 AM on August 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

Wnat a wonderful little game. I'll buy it when the full version becomes available. My only worry is that, even if the final version is ten times as long as the demo, it'll still be way too short, because this is the sort of game I'd want to play for weeks.
posted by pipeski at 7:55 AM on August 6, 2013

Downloaded it and it runs fine on my iMac.
But...I'm not really getting it. I mean, I grasp the "gameplay" mechanics, but I'm just not seeing any...point? I've also run into situation where I would have three tiles up and there is no navigation clue or hotspot available. I was stuck and had to start over, and had no real idea why it ended that way.

There's something there. It's just not especially clear what that is.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:01 AM on August 6, 2013

Thorzdad I had some similar issues but once I figured it out this was were my gasp moments were and I actually literally covered my dropped jaw mouth with how good the "reveal" was. I too think even the finished game would not be long enough!
posted by mrgroweler at 8:04 AM on August 6, 2013

Those must have been truly amazing, mrgrowler. I ran across some interesting transitions and framing tricks, but nothing I would ever consider gasp-inducing moments. Then again, I play games for recreation and don't really get invested in them too much.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:18 AM on August 6, 2013

I too only play for recreation I think it is because I have wanted a point and click puzzler that was good for so long. So was totally in the mood to be surprised to be fair. It is an interesting mechanic executed well.
posted by mrgroweler at 8:25 AM on August 6, 2013

Do those screenshots remind you of the perry bible fellowship or what?
posted by lalochezia at 9:45 AM on August 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

I click the link...

"Oh THAT thing."

(Clearly it was enough to stick in my head, but a bit too obtuse to me to really make sense. Though I thought it was clever and original).
posted by symbioid at 10:57 AM on August 6, 2013

That was beautiful and awesome. I hope he can get funding or help or whatever he needs to keep the story going!
posted by spacewrench at 11:23 AM on August 6, 2013

Beautiful graphics. Will try this out later tonight.

*crosses fingers*
posted by BlueHorse at 3:20 PM on August 6, 2013

Wow. It feels as much like a Caldecott-winning children's book as a video game. Beautiful.
posted by straight at 4:21 PM on August 6, 2013

I couldn't finish the demo because of stupid Java using more than a full CPU and half my RAM, but what I played was amazing.
posted by DU at 4:47 PM on August 6, 2013

And the slowdowns and visual jags under Ubuntu were due to the icedtea VM. If you install the non-free Oracle Java VM with the good JIT (which you can do using this repo if you trust them enough), it runs fantastically well, and it's impressive. Point me to the kickstarter, I've got my credit card out.
posted by kandinski at 4:51 PM on August 6, 2013

I'd definitely pick up the full version, loved what we got from the demo.
posted by angerbot at 6:19 PM on August 6, 2013

Just played the demo and I love it. Can't wait for more.

Gorogoa is to point-and-click adventures as a good riddle is to knock-knock jokes.

A lot of the tricks and puzzles had some difficulty to them, but I did eventually get them and they all seemed obvious in hindsight. With too many point-and-click games, I end up resorting to the walkthrough, only to find some little thing that I thought I had already clicked on, or something I had interactive with in the wrong way, or something else sort of makes sense but still leaves me frustrated. There was none of that with Gorogoa.
posted by recursion at 7:32 PM on August 6, 2013

This is really cool. Between this, Papo & Yo, and (the not actually very fun game) Antichamber, I hope even more games play with space in weird and interesting ways.
posted by cthuljew at 10:51 PM on August 6, 2013

and (the not actually very fun game) Antichamber

Pistols at dawn, sir!
posted by rifflesby at 3:59 AM on August 7, 2013

That was lovely, thank you! I'll be keeping an eye out for the full game.
posted by Georgina at 12:55 AM on August 8, 2013

Papo & Yo

I'm only a quarter of the way into this one (I'm guessing), but so far I've found it utterly charming. After playing so many space marines and armored knights, I'm delighted to play a Brazilian street urchin kicking a soccer ball around the favela and solving puzzles by shifting the neighborhood buildings with surreal sympathetic magic.
posted by straight at 1:53 AM on August 8, 2013

Oh, the Papo & Yo trailer makes it look fascinating. Pity the game is only PlayStation and PC.

I've fallen behind following indy games the last few years. (I mostly play on iOS now.) Are there any other games like these two that folks would recommend that are available on Mac?
posted by Georgina at 3:57 AM on August 8, 2013