Gris Time It's Personal
I had a very personal experience with Gris and it made me feel things that I wasn't expecting. It connected with me more than I ever thought it would.
I had never intended on playing Gris. I had seen it recommended to me multiple times on steam but was always just not that interested. But when I joined the Good Game Lobby discord for the gaming club game of the month (link to the invite here, scroll to the Community Discord Section). Gris was the game for that month. Which also happened to be...in August. It took me a while to get around to putting out this review, largely because I only post once a week and had other articles come first. But now it’s time to get into it. It’s finally time to do a review of the first Game of the Month that I have played.
Gris was an emotional experience for me. Not only have I had my own grief to deal with, but the interpretation just particularly hit home. I felt like I was playing through how my brain worked through my own trauma instead of just playing a game. It was an experience that I will cherish and I will forever remember.
But let’s be real. Just because it’s personal doesn’t mean it’s an amazing game right? Something can feel personal and still play like shit. So does it play like shit? Is it a game that you should only play if you’ve went through grief too or is just as enjoyable for those of us lucky enough to not have dealt with significant grief in our past? Put simply, yes..to the second one. But let’s get in to why.
The Premise
Gris is an atmospheric platformer with very mild MetroidVania aspects about how a woman wakes up in a world of black and white, devoid of all color. Its a dead world as if it has lost all drive to live. Gris, however, continues to move forward despite wanting to succumb to the same thing that made the world into a desolate space. She has to persevere and go around the world returning colors, and thus life, to existence. She also appears to be unable to talk, as if she’s lost her voice or simply feels like she’s just not capable of talking after going through something traumatic. Gris has to deal with the world, return these colors, and find her drive to speak along her journey, or else succumb to the 100 MPH wind of the grief and death.
The Good
I think many people understand that Gris is about overcoming grief of losing someone and putting your world back together after it. However, to me, it made me think of recovery from trauma, but mainly recovery from physical injury or temporary/permanent disability. Dealing with the grief of that trauma and the loss of a life that you might have had if it’s a new permanent disability. This is shown in so many different ways so let’s go over multiple of them.
The art of the game is beautiful like that of a painting. The point of the game is to restore color to a world of black and white. The world is a representation of her existence at the beginning, seeing the world as less than it used to be because what she lost was so important. As each color returns she becomes more and more impacted by it, you can see she is starting to recover and feel more like herself. The world stops being a wasteland, trees grow, we see wildlife. Gris starts to see the world again after being stuck in the dark for so long.
This is also felt through gameplay where Gris has to go around finding lights to connect stars to create walkways for her to be able to continue. Those lights aren’t just lights, they’re the manifestation of how we can find light and memories (which are also technically found throughout the world revealing things about Gris’ childhood) even in the darkest of places and it can help lead us out of the darkness. It’s a beautiful experience.
The story is, again, about Gris recovering from grief and you see that in how she acts as well. At the start she’s more reserved and slow, she obviously has moments where she thinks of giving up. When she gets blown back by wind you can see she is struggling to exist when the world itself is trying to keep her from recovering. When she finds a little buddy in the woods she is, again, reserved but by that point she has returned multiple colors to the world and she is finally trying to be more open and inviting, she helps feed the little guy with apples and makes a friend despite her still seemingly missing her voice. That friend helps her start to see beauty in the world again, and find her reasons to go on.
The level design also echoes this experience. For instance, the game has no map and is a bit twisty, it can sometimes make you wonder if you’re going the right way, but this is exactly what it’s like to recover. The game makes you experience Gris’ journey of making progress, by restoring a color, then having to backtrack and retry something that you couldn’t do prior. It’s not just an experience that adheres somewhat MetroidVania design, but one that echoes a real life experience of recovering from grief.
The “bad guy” of the game also illustrates this point. It’s a black blob of sludge and goes between being the shape of an eel to a bird and to others and it shows that while recovering you can always feel the black sludge creeping towards you, it’s always a worry of yours that you might get caught and fall behind again. That the grief will overtake you. That you’ll lose all progress you were making and start seeing the world in black and white again. Gris feels this as anyone would. The game represents it beautifully.
Gris is a person I feel a connection to. I had to relearn how to walk a few times during my first couple of bouts with my MS impacting my legs. I saw the world the same way she did at the beginning. I dealt with grief from that and had to overcome it like she does. Thankfully, over time I added colors back to my world just like she did. Gris shows, in an artful way, what it feels like to recover from something that takes something fundamental away from you. And I love it that.
The Bad be honest
I think the only issue I had was that...wait maybe the....no no, it has to be the.... Actually, I didn’t have any issues with it. The experience was beautiful and touching and I cannot think of any problem at all.
The Ending - Detailed
**Start Spoilers**
After getting all of the stars to go to the top, Gris attempts to ascend but gets devoured by the black beast that has followed you throughout the game. She’s swallowed whole and has to swim through the black sludge that the monster is made of until she remembers that with the colors back in her life, she can speak again. Or rather, she can sing again.
She sings and fights back against the beast defeating it. She’s then able to be with her mother, represented by the statues around the world, finally accept that her mother is gone, and ascend the stars into the light of the unknown future.
**End Spoilers**
The Ending - Reaction
Gris dealing with and finally accepting what she lost made me think of what I had to go through as well with my MS which took a normal life from me. I got diagnosed at 20. I never had a chance to finish things normal people did at my age. I went through the stages of grief and was able to (mostly) deal with it. I still feel it sometimes but it’s less impactful. Like grief often does, it never fully goes away.
The ending is a beautifully touching experience because of this. Seeing Gris go into the unknown of the future made me tear up. It was beautifully drawn, represented, and touching. It achieved what so many games wish they could, it told a story that everyone can relate to.
The Conclusion
Gris is a brilliant experience that isn’t just filled with a wonderful story and art and gameplay, but has a personal touch to it. It can make you feel emotions. It can make you cry, make you remember what you’ve lost. It’s an experience that can’t go disregarded.
If you have lost someone, if you’ve had something taken from you when it shouldn’t have been, if your life has been irreparably impacted by the outcome of a traumatic event to the point it will never be the same, Gris is a game you need to play. It’s not super long (my playthrough was only about 4 hours), not hard at all, and the puzzles are often just a matter of going the right direction and the experience is just, Ugh, it’s breathtaking. You should play it. Experience it’s beauty. Cry if you have to. Then ascend into the light of the unknown future, because who knows what might come next.
Meow,
Cat
Really sorry to hear about you having MS. And diagnosed so early too, very rough. Really impressive that you are juggling this stack, game design and managing it. That's a lot.
Thank you for writing such a personal account of a game that resonated with you. I really love how grief and more darker emotions are being explored more readily in games, its a real maturing of the medium.
And I really like the application of there being no map here, and the player having to navigate themselves. Usually I'd rail against that as a UI flaw, but as you point out its an artistic decision that semantically ties in with the game.
Anyway, thanks for the piece, got me thinking! Which is always a sign of good writing.
Another one for the wishlist, thanks for the recommendation