Researchers, Artists and Weirdos for the Conceptual Destruction of Facism: a Great God Grove review

2024-12-28

Hello everyone! It feels good to be free of the shadow of that last post. Recently I have been on an academic research spree, in particular I've found myself wanting to learn more and more about the things that make me uncomfortable in hopes of reclaiming them as my own. This has been in large part due to me feeling like my comics fall into this perpetual trap of self-censorship and wanting to outwit myself doubt and shame to allow me to create whatever the heck I want to! A book I have found myself inexplicably drawn to has been the 2008 publication 'Queering the Non/Human', which (three chapters in) has been all about legitimizing the weird, the fucked up, the anti-establishmentarian, in whatever way we academics can. In a very similar fashion, Great God Grove by the ever incredible Limbolane has captured my heart, imagination, and anarchic spirit in ways that not many games can boast.

For the purposes of this review, I will be breaking my thoughts into two seperate areas: one will be a spoiler-free aesthetic and gameplay focused review from the perspective of myself as artist, and the second will be a much more spoiler heavy thematic and story review from the perspective of myself as academic and survivor.

'Maybe bein' weird is an ASSET 'round here.'

Where LimboLane's last game 'Smile for Me' popped paper dolls into a desolate yet intruiging sandbox of a world in its Habitat, Great God Grove is a real living breathing location, that is consistently believable despite it's disbelievable fantasmorical aspects. The Grove is not just a circumstantial area where the game just so happens to take place, but a vibrant and lively world that outlives the player by hundreds of years, with generations of individuals each just as characterful as the last. The insane amount of care put into this world by lead designer Yugo Limbo is something that I think every artist could aspire to, not just for the incredible amount of world-building and character that every set piece has, but for the way that GGG simultaneously acknowledges the contemporary game-art landscape that it exists in and still boldly presses through in innovative and fun ways. Taking on inspiration from all sorts of areas, from the 'Sopranos' to 'Madoka Magica', Limbo is unafraid to cherry pick and mishmash in all kinds of ways, a freedom of expression that toes a wonderful line between utterly childish (in the way artist's like Picasso may describe transcendant art) and thoughtfully provocative. Characters toe the line outside of gender like its their backyard, set pieces boldly call back to times past while imaginine never-to-be futures, and the colors! God, the colors are something else entirely!

While a great deal of the aesthetic value of this game can be attributed to Limbo's skill, the enjoyment that comes out of the act of playing the game is a result of Day Lane's ridiculous attention to detail and user-friendliness. Let's start by talking about the most important part (and sadly, the least paid attention to part!) of every game: the settings! There is not a single game in the world that I have ever played without first and foremost going into the settings menus. Before art or gameplay, accessibility is the key to good design and user-friendliness. For me, this means having plenty of options to change text size, change individual aspects of sound design, and so on. GGG offers many accessibility options in an easy to understand and vigourous way that says to me as a player 'I want you to enjoy this game, so please do so the way that feels best to you!' Even more importantly to me, the act of using the accessibility features (like removing chromic abberation and of course increasing the text size) has absolutely no negative impacts on gameplay, which is sadly a very very common side-effect of devs that never bug test their accessibility features. For this alone, GGG stands as a radically disability friendly game that caters to many more of its audience.

Moving onto the meat of the game itself however, this fanatic attention to detail from the team never once falters! GGG plays smooth as butter, with many miniscule decisions made that I wouldn't have ever noticed had I not read the accompanying artbook. The 3D environments of the game are my favourite example of the attention to detail; each god is carefully designed with rigging and animation courtesy of the fantastic Jack Cornish to feel inherently unique. Some feel infinitely far away, others' so close you could touch. The UI design shines so bright in these segments, with ease of access to the inventory and ease of- how to say- interjecting literally anything the gods try to say to you at any time just for fun, the gods are the pinnacle of creativity and characterization. The first person perspective alone adds for a sense of closeness with these gods, but the added ability to look around within their worlds is such a teeny tiny feature that I just adored! I'm in no way a game reviewer, game designer, or anything of the sort so maybe my review of these aspects doesn't really make a lot of meaningful sense... but just know that I LOVED it! And that's all that matters.