In one word, Great God Grove is awesome. I stopped a petite community from completing a blood ritual, played matchmaker for a group of lonely hearts that involved organizing a date with a god, and covered a statue with paint as part of a revolutionary movement to raise the power of art. My time with GGG was a mix of colorful escapades, and with its tale of divine misadventures, striking art style, puzzle-solving in a vacuum, and nightmare-inducing puppet work, I’m now a die-hard LimboLane devotee.
Playing as the up-to-date postman in the grove, your mission is to explore a strange island, delivering messages to an array of strange characters and even stranger gods. A giant cosmic tear in the sky threatens to destroy the world if the gods don’t stop it, but unfortunately everyone falls out of action and causes chaos – arguing among themselves, flooding the grove with endless tears, or demanding a human sacrifice. In addition to postman, you can add agony aunt and deity slayer to your resume.
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To assist bring the gods and their worshipers back from the brink of chaos, while also averting the impending catastrophe, you will deliver their messages – but not in the classic, postal sense. Use a megaphone to suck out a character’s speech bubble and then shoot it at someone else in the world’s strangest telephone game. You have room for up to five speech bubbles in your inventory, and using this arsenal of word fragments you need to solve some airy puzzles. For example, one character is too nervous to confess his feelings to his empowered lumberjack, so you can suck up his confession, run across the island, and shoot him to assist him.
This wonderfully strange idea keeps popping up in up-to-date ways. You may need to suck out a whispered password and then fire it at the person guarding the door to gain access, or you may need to pass direct instructions from one person to another. Being original with words and their different interpretations is part of solving puzzles, and who said what and what was said to whom is a satisfying ball of yarn to unravel. No, you cannot absorb every bubble, i.e. only those marked with a special frame. However, this helps improve concentration and keep the vacuum mechanics from feeling too overwhelming.
Not every piece of speech needs to be used exclusively in a riddle. You can start a dialogue with any character, which will almost always trigger a reaction and a fun interaction. I once ran around the Grove and shot everyone with “I’m HAM-HOT for Handsome God” to see their reaction, and I wasn’t disappointed. Puzzle solving isn’t just about dusting off dialogue bubbles, you’ll be using your suction power to pull levers and pick up objects. I even inhaled someone’s sneeze, which turned into a disgusting cloud of germs when shot. There are also “fight” sequences, but the “fight” seems too earnest for what is essentially throwing pumpkins at a little guy wearing a traffic cone for a helmet.
Everything in Great God Grove seems fun, and this is only enhanced by the eye-catching art style. It looks like something you’d find on Adult Swim while channel surfing at 1:00 a.m. I also like the way the characters talk. Remember when the movie Juno came out and every teenager wanted to absorb the entire script into their vocabulary? I want to do this with the Great God Grove. Everyone has their own unique tone of voice, way of speaking and pronunciation of words. A standout is the character of Inspeck and her group of buddies called the Bizzyboys, who have a very specific lexicon that is such a terrifyingly right throwback to a 2010 Tumblr statement that it gave me earnest whiplash.
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The gods themselves are also completely savage, and GGG makes them all lovable and childlike rather than earnest rulers. They’re also all presented in 3D rather than 2D, which gives them an otherworldly feel, as if they could pass through the screen at any moment. These chats are always conducted in first-person mode, and the developers of LimboLane are bringing back the great mechanics they used in their first game, Smile For Me. When a god asks a question, you can operate your mouse to shake your head in agreement or disagreement. Your hero may remain still, but this nod and shake option will give you a voice. I would often choose a more contrarian response, just to be a little cheeky and see how they would react. Who doesn’t like to provoke god?
Another element that LimboLane continued with Smile For Me is the operate of physical dolls that are both adorable and terrifying. Video tapes found in the grove will feature felt versions of the characters, giving you more context and knowledge about the world. There’s a lot of “Don’t hug me, I’m scared” overtones in these sections, as the puppets become more and more unbalanced the further into the game. All I can say is that I didn’t have to watch a cute felt puppet make a “burger” while slamming his face into a very real, disgusting piece of meat.
There is so much to love about Great God Grove. It’s a perfect example of a game made by hand, right down to its striking art style, strange lexicon, brilliant vacuum puzzle solving, and memorable puppet work. There are several critical messages to decipher in his surrealism. The game has a lot to say about deviance, power, art, censorship, and what it’s like to be a loser with no direction in life. It’s like a children’s show with an critical message at its core, as if Sesame Street wanted to teach you about the manipulative pitfalls of idol worship. In this strange world, even the gods are afraid of being forgotten, but GGG won’t have that problem because it’s one of the boldest games of 2024.