Great God Grove

Every so often, a giant rift in the sky threatens to destroy the world, and it’s up to the gods to close the rift in time to avoid an apocalypse. Except this time, the gods are too busy bickering among themselves to pay too much attention to us humans. It might sound like a critique of current society, but it also happens to be the setting for one of the most fun games 2024 has to offer. Because Great God Grove is the latest title by Limbolane, and they sure know how to create a whole lot of fun in the face of the end of all things. You get to play as a godpoke, and with King, the God of Communication, going missing after sending the other gods some pretty devious letters, it’s up to you to restore balance among them and hopefully get them to save us all. To aid you on your quest, you are bestowed the Megapon, the King’s mail delivery system, as it literally falls into your lap. This tool works like a hoover, allowing you to suck up different items but also—and more importantly—some of the sentences people say to you.

There’s a lot going on in Great God Grove, as you can tell. As King’s replacement, you get to use communication as a literal weapon to get the job done. The game introduces its logic in a gentle way: someone wants their lover to finally admit to his feelings for them, but when you go to speak with said lover, he conveys to you that he’s scared to do so. But as he mentions his true feelings to you, you can hoover up those words and literally throw them at his beloved, making them very happy. It’s an interesting kind of puzzle, which is fortunate as it’s basically what the gameplay boils down to in general. You move from village to village in an effort to get the gods back on our side. To get access to the gods, you need to perform fetch quests for the villagers, with most of these centring around what’s being said. And what’s being said often isn’t all that nice. 

The game offers an interesting take on hearsay, how it gets started, but above all, how it transforms into misinformation. The biggest example is how the gods have been taken aback by King’s letters: he’s supposed to be a friend, someone whose words you can take at face value. But that last batch of mail has caused turmoil, with the gods not knowing what to believe. This then trickles down to the humans as they react to the divine confusion without knowing all of the facts. It’s a refreshingly earnest take from a game so centred on comedy, and through exquisite writing, Great God Grove manages to pull it off. But societal critique isn’t the only thing the game has going for it: there’s so much to love here. The artwork, while taking cues from the Paper Mario series with its 2D sprites running around a semi-3D world, is vibrant and unique, reminding me of the best kind of Saturday morning cartoons. There’s an edge to how the characters and especially the gods are designed, making them feel both welcoming and slightly threatening. The writing is consistently funny as well, with every character being given substance.

It’s that constant sharp wit that really elevates this game from just a fetch quest simulator into something more. You don’t get to hoover up just everything that any character says; you only get to pick up certain quotes, and it’s then up to you to figure out how to use those particular words on which character. The game adds some challenge by both allowing you to hoover up less important quotes and by limiting your item slots to a maximum of five. And since you have to divide your slots between quotes and actual items, this can become quite the puzzle.

However, the game never gets too challenging. It can be a bit surprising at times figuring out which quotes to use on what character, though. I didn’t realise some of the quotes could be used in a more literal way than others, which was a pleasant surprise but would’ve been nice to know a little earlier in the game. The real challenge can often be found in managing your inventory. Early on in the game, there’s a song you need to remember that has four parts. Getting those means that 80% of your inventory is already full, so you have to choose carefully how to continue to interact with people. But the game’s difficulty is pretty kind. Imagine a light-hearted point-and-click game without the frustrations of that genre’s hardest puzzles. There’s a nice sense of balance to the game. Whenever you feel like something might become annoying, like gameplay becoming too limited, Great God Grove finds ways to freshen things up. That counts for the story too, with it veering into predictable territory at times, only to swerve that at the latest.

But the true stars of the game are the gods. They are just so… human. They all have wants and needs and can react emotionally to certain events. They can be petty, or full of love, or hilarious. You care for these gods without feeling sorry for them. Take Inspekta, the god of leadership and the first of his kind you meet. He tries so hard to do well, despite living in a sort of spy novel fiction, despite his detectives, the Bizzyboys, being more of a bother than a help. Man, when this game clicks, it really clicks.