Good news, chums,the releaseofGreat God Groveis right around the corner. It’s the sort-of follow-up ofSmile For Meby LimboLane. It has a lot of the same good stuff, like puppets and flat characters. It also has jokes if your sense of humor hasn’t fallen off.
It’s pretty different, though. It’s still a joy-maker adventure game about helping people out, butGreat God Grovebases its puzzles around sucking the words out of someone’s mouth and firing them at someone else. It’s a unique twist on an old formula, and I’m not totally sure how I feel about it, so I’m going to work through my emotions the way I usually do: posting questionable content online.
InGreat God Grove, you are placed in the boots of a Godpoke, which is a cross between a messenger of the gods and a cowboy. Now, I’m going to admit that I don’t fully understand all the details of the story here, so things are going to get a little dicey.
You’re on the trail of King, the previous messenger of the gods. King seemingly became fed up with the gods, mailed each of them a nasty message, and left the pantheon – and the world with it – in complete disarray. This is a problem because a massive rift has opened up in the sky. Apparently, these rifts open every 33 years and threaten to swallow up the world. To close it, the gods have to work together to pull it shut. Unfortunately, in the wake of King’s nastiness, the gods don’t feel like doing much, let alone cooperating.
The rift also has the power to elevate a single human to godhood, which is where I start to get confused. King is apparently a god, so under his godhood, he was still delivering messages? Under normal circumstances, why does it take so long for the gods to close the rift? How does a human have time to enter it? Does something like this happen every time, where a mortal has to convince the gods to cooperate? Did the game explain this to me, and I just couldn’t grok it through the cutesy dialogue? I don’t know.
The important parts are clear however: King was nice and now they’re not. The gods are all so absorbed in their own heartbreak that they aren’t even thinking about closing the rift, leaving the world on the precipice of disaster. As a godpoke, you need to use your power over words to restore order and close the rift.
You’re equipped with a, uh, thing… A suck thing. It has a name, it’s, er… Right, Megapon. Every once in a while, someone will say something perforated. There will be little dots around it, letting you suck it into your Megapon. You can then find someone in the environment who says something like, “Ooo, I wish someone would give me a fat compliment,” and you throw it at them, and they’ll hopefully react.
As I said, it’s a unique approach to the adventure game formula, but it also has the same problem that classic point-and-clicks had. When you’re not certain what to do, your main course of action might become just rubbing phrases on people until one of them reacts. I ran into one early in the second area that had me scratching my head. I wound up needing to use a word given by a dog on a cow, then using a word from the cow on my target. Looking back, there were certainly hints as to what the solution was, but I can also see why I was confused.
And while it’s certainly novel to use phrases to solve puzzles, I’m not sure they’re much better than items. And trust me, they feel exactly like items. You can carry five at a time, so you just have a pocket full of sentences. On the one hand, it’s easier for an adventure game to give you a hint when the solution always involves talking to someone. On the other hand, it’s not as exciting as carrying a hamster around in your pocket.
It’s worth noting that you sometimes do just pick up regular items. It’s not very common in the demo I played, but maybe it is later in the game? I’m kind of feeling that it won’t be, and maybe that’s okay. I was really getting into the flow of things toward the end.
While I may be a bit iffy on the approach to puzzles, it’s hard not to love the art style. It still uses a simplistic, angular style similar to Scott C.’s work onPsychonautsor even just simply ‘60s cartoons. It feels more naturally executed thanSmile For Me, which I already found great. However, I’ve found the art to be incredibly consistent and cohesive for both games. It blends well with the 3D backgrounds and effects. Whenever something looks a bit off, it’s usually easy to believe it was intentional.
Every once in a while, you can view explainer videos that feature real flesh-and-felt puppets. They’re pretty great, but they clearly haven’t helped me enough. They’re also complete asides that you can’t suck on, but watching two puppets chew on the same hoagie is worth the viewing.
The writing is charming and packed with wordplay, but it’s also maybe a smidge too much. Few folks will straight-talk with you, making you try to glean the communicated information from between cutesy intentional misspellings. The names given are often unique non-names – er, nononyms – and I already can’t remember people’s names at the best of times. Or their faces. Or past encounters, most of the time. So, remembering who Sirena is just makes things tougher. So, it’s a me problem, maybe, but thank you for naming the baker “Bayker.” I think I can remember that one.
I was given access to a slightly longer version than the demo that will be released as part of the upcoming Steam Next Fest. As it stands, I don’t really solidly know what I think aboutGreat God Grove. I’m told I played about 40% of the overall game, so there’s a lot of time for me to start clicking with the things that haven’t yet clucked. Even towards the end of the demo, I was starting to get a better feel for how to overcome its word puzzles.
And I kind of feel like something is still lurking under the surface. A great reveal, twist, or dash of darkness. I don’t think all its cards are on the table, and at least with the demo, I really want to see what else it has up its sleeve. It’s out on November 15, so at least I don’t have to wait terribly long to find out.
