Spanish developers Nomada Studio and publisher Devolver Digital will be launching Gris, a gorgeous 2D platformer game with a beautiful art style and quiet, meditative gameplay, on the Nintendo Switch and PC this December. The game deals with the theme of personal loss and sadness, featuring its heroine, a young woman, who must deal with grief in her life, and inside her.
The graphics are what catch the eye the first, but the game’s approach to gameplay will slowly raise some eyebrows too- the mechanics here are in service to the themes the game wants to explore, and it seems deliberately introspective and calm, not wanting to stress you out as you meditate on its message. The game lacks a HUD, health, or even death. In a lot of ways, it is influenced by other similar games that used interactivity to explore a theme that have released in the last few years.
“Journey was a personal change,”Adrian Cuevas, co-founder of Nomada Studio told Engadget. “It was like ‘wow, video games can be this as well?!'” The double-jump is similar to Xbox and PC exclusive Ori and the Blind Forest, and the restrained approach to storytelling mimics the wonderfully creepy Inside. “[Inside] is a bit more linear, a bit more simple. But the whole experience is so smooth and well done. That’s what we’re aiming for too.”
He is also not shy about talking about what the game is dealing with, without giving much away. “We just want people to know that it’s about a bad experience,” Cuevas said, “and how you overcome any kind of bad experience.”
If Gris has caught your attention, it launches on PC and Nintendo Switch this December. You can watch some gameplay courtesy of PC Gamer for yourself below.