PixlBit

While GRIS is a short, 3-4 hour experience that doesn't take a whole lot of gaming skill for most of its run-time, don't be fooled into thinking there aren't legitimately challenging platforming and puzzle sections. Whether this immerses you more in GRIS's world or is just an interruption to your good time depends on what kind of games you like, but I'd say it's well worth the experience. 

Text Review/Transcript:

The first hour or so of GRIS led me to believe it’s an “experience game,” along the lines of Journey and Flower, in which you have control but there’s not much you can really do to mess up and the experience you have means a lot more than your gaming skills. Having now finished the main story of the game,  GRIS still kind of fits in that genre, but plenty of puzzle-platforming and optional exploration make it a bit more “gamey” than those titles. Most of the time, I welcomed feeling more in control of and challenged by the experience, but a couple platforming and puzzle sections had me wishing the game would get out of its own way.

In any case, I’d say the colors, art style, music, animation, fluid controls, and vague-but-pretty-sure-I-get-it story are worth experiencing for yourself. GRIS is the Spanish word for grey, so the objective of the game is fittingly to add color (and music) back into the world once the crumbling of a giant lady statue leaves the main character stranded, voiceless and faltering in a colorless desert. It says something about the developers’ artistic ability that even the supposedly bland, grey world seen in the beginning of the game just looks like awesome sketch art punctuated by your main character’s design.

Along the journey, you’ll pick up stars that form into constellations you can walk on in order to access new areas and gain abilities like double-jumping and ground pounding, among others. Having only received 6 out of 17 achievements on my playthrough, I can’t really tell you what you get for finding enough doodads to awaken the hieroglyphs seen on the main area’s walls, but I’m certainly thinking of replaying the game with a guide to find out. And, of course, you’ll unlock the colors necessary to complete the game, each with its own gorgeous themed area.

While the unlockables are fun to find and collect and fit the visual and emotional themes of the game well, I would have liked the option of a map for certain sections of the game, at least once you’ve completed it and want to go back and find anything you may have missed. There were occasions where I backtracked a bit too far because I wasn’t sure where to go next or if I was solving the right puzzle in an area, as well as times where I’d want to explore and find extra items only to realize I just jumped down a hill I couldn’t get back up from. As I alluded to earlier, some of the platforming kind of deflated my experience and wound up making what should have looked like beautifully shot scenes from a Terrence Malick film look like outtakes in which cast and crew were pretending I didn’t just fall down 12 flights of stairs before gracefully making my way back up. The fact the orchestral music had died down at that point just made things more awkward.

Still, these moments were few and far between and the puzzles were usually just enough to make me feel accomplished without being frustrated. Nothing was difficult enough to keep me from completing the game in a total of about 4 hours, so whatever annoyances I had with the game were resolved pretty quickly.

I’d say GRIS is worth full-price despite its short run time, because it’s such a unique and even emotional experience despite the lack of any dialogue or exposition. This vagueness winds up being a strength as any interpretation you have of the game will be at least somewhat your own. If what you’ve seen has you interested in this game, chances are you will not be disappointed in the final product. Just don’t be fooled into thinking it’s pure art house fair and expect to do some traditional gaming before you see the end.