Review: Great God Grove is a game that will make you eat their words

Great God Grove is an interesting adventure/puzzle game that takes wordsmithing to a creative new level. With the help of your newly acquired megaphone, you’re able to suck up objects and whole sentences from conversations to use to further your progress.

Personally, I found myself drowning in the aesthetics. I really can’t gush enough about the color palette, thick lines, and the blend of soft vs chunky shading. This style evokes something truly nostalgic. In my mind, if you mixed the thicker lines of games like Parappa the Rapper with the coloring of Psychonauts, you’d get this somewhere down the line.

Great God Grove: Who needs a silver tongue when you can use their words against them?

Great God Grove starts with you on a ship on your way to Grove Cove. The journey is going fairly smoothly until an object falls from the sky and drops through the roof. If you’re expecting it to be something sensible, think again.

It’s a Megaphone that, up until this moment, was in the hands of a God more commonly known as King. This megaphone has the power to suck up objects and spit them out including full sentences.

Not only will the exact words be absorbed into the object, but the voice as well. You’ll find that some villagers will respond more to who is saying something, but it’s mostly about the subject matter.

When you land on the island, you learn that King used to be a mailperson on the island who ascended to god level. However, something went awry along the way and someone who was lauded as kind and caring started to send letters meant to cause chaos.

It’s these actions that prompted another god to dispose of the megaphone and how we became in possession of it. Using the megaphone, we have to journey through the cities on the island, fixing the issues the king caused and gaining the trust of the patrons.

Oh, and did I mention the tear in the sky above the island? Every 33 years, a rift is torn open to accept a new human into godhood. It can only be closed by the other gods and if it’s not closed, it will cause “cataclysmic consequences.”

So, how does it play? I’ve already gushed about the visuals, but there’s more here than meets the eye. I found the idea to be a pretty unique one and it mostly delivers. The tutorial is hidden in dialogue which I love, but I feel like there’s not enough tutorial upfront. 

Oh, hey, but seriously, have you seen how gorgeous this game is?

Thankfully, all of my confusion was in the first half, but I did end up having to restart my game because I thought I had softlocked myself. While the game teaches you how to pick up objects, it does not teach you to pick up sentences.

I went around in circles and exhausted all of my objects twice before I realized I was meant to suck up words to use against a different person. To be fair to the game, the text changed to have lines around it, but without the proper cue, I thought it was just a design choice to show emotion due to the context of what was said.

And, to be fair to me, the game doesn’t always prompt with the dotted lines. You’ll generally get the lines when you’re next to something you pick up or reach a point in the dialogue that you can snag. But, there are times when I’ve missed dialogue because it didn’t indicate I could take it.

For the most part, it’s easy to figure out what you need to do. In the moments that I was stuck, I was really thankful for the hint system. Not that you’ll know you have one until you stumble upon it.

Each city has its own God that you need to help and it’s revisiting them that will prompt them to ask if you need help. It seems like they will give you hints step by step if you need it. You just have to return after you’ve finished completing the previous hint if you’re still stuck.

For dialogue, it’s clear that a lot of thought was put into the narrative design. Not only does each villager have their own dialogues, but they generally have unique responses to sentences you throw at them even if they’re not for them. This isn’t always true, but it was a nice detail.

I bet you wouldn’t throw that sentence in my face! …oh, you would.

You should expect to do a lot of reading. It’s definitely not a visual novel, but the whole basis of the game relies on listening and finding suitable responses to progress. If you’re not a fan of dialogue-heavy games, you will not enjoy Great God Grove.

Sometimes, dialogue-heavy games are hit or miss for me. For the most part, I found it easy to immerse into the game. However, some choices were hard to push through. The Bizzyboys, a group that works with the first God you meet, talks in a way that is very reminiscent of memespeak.

It’s not quite “canihazcheeseburger” level, but it’s close. And it doesn’t help that the God in question speaks in what feels like failed puns, except I don’t think that was the aim. Memespeak combined with dialogue like “pro-tech-did” instead of protected, “co-manned” instead of command, and “valley-oobly” instead of valuably just felt like a double whammy to my brain.

But, hey, that’s just a personal gripe that you may not have an issue with.

Overall, I thought it was a creative idea with fantastic art design. I had fun with it once I got comfortable in the rules. And, if you’re an achievement buff, Great God Grove has 42 achievements that they dole out generously.

Great God Grove comes out November 15th for $19.99. You’ll be able to get it on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox. If this isn’t your cup of tea, you can check out our latest review: Amber Isle.