Gecko Gods is an exploration adventure, puzzle platformer, and gecko simulator with light action elements, a simple story, and a drop-dead gorgeous color palette with dazzling lighting. The game has ingenuity and beauty, but its world is sparse and its thread a little uneven.
First things first, I cannot stop waxing on about the inspired traversal mechanics of this game. Scaling walls, peaks, and even ceilings without a stamina meter, or really any limitations at all, grants a freedom of movement to players that few games in my experience have ever equaled. Your gecko can move at a good clip by default, and with jump, sprint, and dash options on top, you can rush and soar through labyrinthine corridors and up and down ancient city ruins that are scattered about the map at a gratifying pace.
Despite little in the way of real-time action throughout the quest as a whole, there is an obvious attention to detail when it comes to the way it feels to flit across surfaces, so much so that during the few unexpected instances where the game transitions from exploration to 3D platforming, the experience is downright exciting. My biggest complaint with the movement is that there isn’t more action platforming to do. Clinging to surfaces is automatic and consistent (although less so while holding the sprint button), and moving from one angle of terrain to another is virtually seamless and effortless unless the geometry is particularly wonky.
Gecko Gods will forever hold a place in my heart because my four-year-old daughter, on seeing me press the interact button to induce the gecko to open its mouth and let loose a tiny squeak, pleaded with me to pass her the controller, and I, with some coaxing, relented repeatedly to watch her running around in circles, spamming the squeak button, and eating bugs—the last of which never failed to elicit a cackle of triumph. Unlike in other open-world games where I’ve had her try her hand, here she naturally made use of the gamepad’s joystick camera, and it is a testament to how inviting and intuitive the gecko controls are that this is the game that impelled my child to venture into 3D gaming.
Alas, as fun as it is to move about the environment, the overworld isn’t all that rewarding to explore. There are collectibles to find as you crawl about—called relics—that serve no purpose other than to fill out a compendium in the pause menu. They’re inoffensive if you don’t mind collecting for collecting’s sake, but they are not particularly ornate or pleasing to look at, they do not come with any accompanying lore, and they do not have any gameplay effects. The lack of exciting finds can make the exploration, which is the game’s main hustle, somewhat tedious, as what secrets there are to uncover outside of the main quest do not really deliver anything of value or interest. Any joy derived from these collectibles would likely come purely from the puzzle-solving required of the player to obtain them.
Insects dispersed about the islands likewise serve as collectibles, which you collect by eating. Fortunately, catching and eating bugs is its own reward, as my daughter can attest, but I couldn’t help but think the game might have been enhanced if eating them had a more consequential function: a temporary power-up of some kind? A health restore? Maybe they could be traded somewhere for something else?
The game does also have a currency of small golden runes in tremendous abundance. You can find them primarily by breaking pots or defeating diminutive foes, and the bits conveniently gather to you automatically if you do not take the time to collect them, which I very much appreciated. As an avid Zelda fan and habitual clay pot breaker, I quickly amassed an oversized wallet with more than enough cash to purchase every available cosmetic. Unfortunately, this rendered the currency and its accumulation literally valueless very quickly.
The meat of the game itself is a series of riddles and puzzles, spread out across decaying ruins and caves among a collection of islands. The puzzles in the first third or so of the game I found underwhelmingly simple, but with patience they ramped up. What started as finding switches and opening doors became a cohesive series of more involved challenges that connected to other bigger puzzles on other islands. It was pretty cool. I think the game really finds its groove once you dig in on the larger islands.
It is an incivility for me to have gone on this long without mentioning the game’s most manifest influence, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The influence is present in the lighting, the colors, the puzzles, and, oh, the sailing. It is most openly evoked as you sail between islands over the water, reflecting the sky, the bright sun overhead, and the wind at your back, with heroic and adventurous music in your ears. The music in general has that quality to it: light and enterprising, with a little piano. At times the sound is tense and mystical; other times it’s groovy and percussive. In every case it harmonizes with and enhances its setting.
Gecko Gods is one of those games that raises a question I already know the answer to: does this formula work without combat (or with minimal combat in this case)? A bright overworld filled with cryptic caverns and secrets—absolutely, it does work, even in spite of some of my misgivings with the reward system and pacing. The game pulls you forward with the promise of discovery and adventure, and I would say it delivers more often than not.
Playing pre-release I found the game to be pretty buggy, but I encountered nothing that wasn’t temporary or couldn’t be fixed on reset, and I am assured that larger issues will be patched before release. If my daughter can still find a way to clip out of bounds, as she did in the first five minutes of playing (I’m so proud), it honestly would not detract from the experience for me.
The game is innovative and absorbing all the way through with some memorable gameplay moments, but the world’s secrets and story are less substantive than one might hope. If you decide to pick this up, it likely won’t take 10 hours of your time to complete, depending on how much you lend the controller to your kids.
