Great God Grove

Great God Grove had me hooked until the moment I had cracked the thing and brought peace and harmony to the Grove.

Great God Grove is an immensely polished and precisely executed game, and that’s the most impressive part about it. Its pacing and aesthetic are finely honed and there’s nary a loose thread to be found. A bit more punch and the narrative would be perfect, but it presents a good amount of depth to sink into. It also features puppets gnawing on a gigantic hoagie, and really, what more can you ask for?

Great God Grove's system that has you sucking up speech bubbles remains novel throughout, with plenty of quirky characters and stories to uncover. With some fantastic highpoints, some more straightforward areas will have you yearning for a bit more depth.

Great God Grove brims with charm and originality, offering a fresh take on word puzzles and gods among people. Its offbeat humour and playful design will draw you in, but clunky mechanics and a fairly straightforward narrative may leave you wanting more cohesion and polish. With a little more divine intervention, Great God Grove’s quirky moments might have ascended to a truly special adventure.

There’s so much to love about Great God Grove. It’s the perfect example of a handcrafted game through and through, from its striking art style, strange lexicon, brilliant vacuum-based puzzle-solving, and haunting puppet work. There are several important messages to decipher in its surrealism. The game has a lot to say about deviation, power, art, censorship, and how it feels being a loser with no discernable life direction. It's like a kid’s show with an important message at its core, like if Sesame Street wanted to teach you about the manipulative pitfalls of idol worship. In this strange world, even gods fear being forgotten, but GGG won't have that problem as it's hands down one of the boldest games of 2024.