Gris
12 Hours. Platinum Earned.
I downloaded Gris because my wife had mentioned being interested in the game. She was a huge fan of Journey and had heard that Gris was the spiritual successor. She asked if we could play the game together, and being the incredible husband that I am, I magnanimously obliged and gave the game a whirl.
This download and playthrough happened way back in December 2025. This was back when I had picked up a higher tier of PS Plus for a short period of time on discount with the aim of playing as many games as possible. I hoped to write a bunch of handwritten notes and turn them into articles en-masse in rapid succession. As you may have guessed, life happened and I never ended up writing about most of the games I rushed through. Now that my writing mojo seems to have found its way back to me, I think it’s finally time to dust off my old notebooks and get to work!
To quote Alex from Nintendo Life: ‘That’s enough waffling, let’s dive right into things!’
What I loved!
Gris is a beautiful indie platformer. Honestly, the word ‘beautiful’ does not do justice to how inspired this game’s art is. I hadn’t felt this awestruck by the visuals of a game since I saw Journey for the first time. Gris’ world looks like a watercolour painting that you can interact with! The colours on screen add to the emotional weight that you feel as a player. The red world’s hues raised the tension in action sequences, and the green world’s made me feel calm and relaxed. These colours tie in with the deeply moving narrative of the game which I’ll dive into soon.
The devs did not just stop at creating a beautiful image. They took time to painstakingly pair every movement on screen with beautiful audio. ‘Incredible music and sound design’, reads the first line of my notes as I go on to talk about how noteworthy (pun-intended) the water effects are. Even now I remember loving how the pitter patter of the little animated bugs’ legs embellished their adorable movement.
In my diary I found a note that emphasises how all these elements combined to make something worth remembering: ‘The crickets left me feeling so awestruck. The art, the music, the level design, everything was so profound that I feel like I barely scratched the surface of the story/message being told. This is not just “game”, this is art.’
I have to admit, I’m not the biggest fan of platformers. I do LOVE a good Mario game (2D or 3D), and THOROUGHLY enjoyed Astro’s Playroom. That being said, you’d be hard pressed to find me trying out challenge runs on a platformer for fun. Heck, I stopped playing Hollow Knight (a game that EMANATES GOAT potential combat-wise) just because I couldn’t bear having to platform my way back to the boss every time I lost. If you are a platformer enthusiast you will definitely get more out of the gameplay than I did. That being said,I still enjoyed it!
Gris’ game-design is brilliant. The amount of variety stuffed into a game I saw on sale for around $2 is mental. This variety is fundamentally tied to the plethora of environments in which you platform. You have a desert section where you battle against strong sandstorms, a megalithic tower section where you use butterflies to shoot up vertically, and underwater sections that you swim through. Each of these areas come with a signature power up or ability that you have to use to get to the end. My notes back up my positive memories: I made special mention that the reverse gravity section was amazing.
If you care about story spoilers, skip to the ‘What I’m mixed on’ section ahead.
The Narrative
I have to admit, at first, I had some trouble understanding what the story was about. And since it’s been about 3/4 of a year since I played it, I went ahead and watched a whole playthrough again before penning this part of the article. I’m pleased to report that my earlier interpretations held true, and watching it again was a really pleasant experience!
The game begins with a girl watching a huge statue crumble and losing her voice as a result. As she treks through the world, she slowly gains powers and abilities and meets other creatures that help her through her emotional journey. While I loved watching every cutscene and felt something in my chest at every vignette that played out on my TV screen, I did not quite ‘get’ what the story was about. It was not til the end of the underwater section that I realised what the crumbling statue represented: the protagonist’s mother. The whole game was Gris’ journey of dealing with the grief of her mother’s loss.
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As you progress through each level, the canvas is painted with a new colour. You meet cute (and sometimes terrifying) critters along the way you help you along your journey and empower you in ways that helps you traverse the world more effectively. The critters were adorable and memorable to the point where I smile recalling their animations even now, and they were all beautifully realised in this game’s artstyle. The power-ups were satisfying and added a lot of variety to the gameplay that made it a lot of fun.
The game begins grey, bereft of colour. This represents Gris’ denial: she cannot accept her loss. She had thrown away every shade of emotion from her life that could force her to confront what she has just experienced. As a result of this unhealthy but natural response, she loses her singing voice. Then, she reaches the second stage: rage. The world is painted red, perfectly complementing the seething flame of anger that surges within Gris. The colour adds so much weight to the world. Gris faces sandstorms one after another and gains the strength to stand her ground. She pushes through, and makes it to the end.
It is at this point that Gris moves onto the next stage: bargaining. The colour green gets added onto the canvas, but the colour red does not disappear. (Personal note: I DISTINCTLY Remember feeling relieved to see green back in the world when I got there. It was cathartic.) I love that the creators did not simply replace the red with green because it perfectly symbolises how in real life the stages of grief do not necessarily come one by one but hit you simultaneously. A person in the bargaining stage will most likely still feel rage. Our emotional states as human beings cannot be reduced to a simple ‘happy’ or ‘sad’, they are generally complex mixtures of happy AND sad, and perhaps angry or melancholic too.
As she makes her way through the calming green forest and then up the tower, the demons of her inner pain confront her again in bestial form (the beast is adorable though, in my humble opinion). The palette returns to a flush red hue bringing Gris’s anger and hurt back to the forefront. After surviving this confrontation , she breaks down in tears and canvas is flood by deep blue rain, representing her next stage: depression.
Gris drowns in her depression both literally and figuratively. The world is flooded and the next area she explores is underwater. You traverse yet another breathtaking world as by swimming down deeper, working to earn each star to push your way forward. This is where you meet the best character in the game: Señor Tortuga. This magnanimous turtle illuminates the darkness so that Gris can go and confront her trauma directly: so she can stand once again upon the crumbling statue of her mother. She nearly regains her voice but is attacked again by the beast of sorrow, pushing her back into the depths. It is at the moment when she is nearly swallowed into oblivion that el señor comes back and saves her, allowing her to continue on her journey back home. In my opinion, this is a representation of the effect having those who care for you and are willing to support you around when you’re down in the deep pits of darkness life can toss you into.
At the final stage, the final colour yellow returns. Gris is beginning to accept what happened to her. This part is by far the most fun to play. The level design incorporates elements of every single preceding level and mixes it up with gravity mechanics to create beautiful mind-boggling platforming sections that play as amazingly as they look. The map is littered with lil’ yellow fireflies that bring into vision platforms and stairs that you need to climb up (or down). I’d like to believe that this is a little representation of how Gris is internally begining to recognise the elephant in the room: her mother’s loss. She cannot bargain her way out of this. She cannot rage for all of eternity. She has to accept reality. And when she finally becomes able to do this? Her voice returns.
Gris’ beautiful voice brings back to the room every vivid colour that she had lost. She uses it to collect the final stars she needs to climb back up to the memory of her mother. When she finally gets there, she is once again faced by the monster of her grief, who reveals its true form: that of Gris herself. She is once again swallowed by her depression, as she probably will be again and again throughout the course of her life. But this time? She swims out with the power of her own will. Her journey has made her stronger. She sings to put the crumbled statue of her mother back together, and this finally allows her to ascend the final stairs out of this world. This world is a creation of Gris’s grief. Her journey through this world and her confrontation with the monster of her own emotions shows us how Gris slowly learnt to process what happened to her and became strong enough to go and live her life again. Honestly, for an indie game you can buy for little more $2, this story is absolutely top class. It puts even big AAA titles tales to shame.
So Why am I mixed on the game?
The (personal) answer is my platinum hunting experience. I LOVED the game when I first rolled the credits, but having to play thorough it again and again to try and get the platinum was tedious for me. Like I said before, I’m not the best at platformers. Least of all those that combine platforming with puzzles that are genuinely hard to solve. There is no easy to access in-game tracker that shows you how many collectibles you have, and while I think this is a good thing, this made it harder on a guy who already has a hard time finding things. My wife and I tried achieving all the trophies on our own but we failed to find all the collectibles multiple times. As the game does not really have that many checkpoints, we had to play lengthy sections of the game through repeatedly.
Our first playthrough of the game only took us about 4 hours. As you can see, it took us twice that time to clean up all the trophies. We could have absolutely just followed a guide from step 1, but we wanted to try and do things on our own. This was not the greatest idea. The tedium of repetition was negatively compounded by the personal issues I had plaguing me at the time. I felt as though many of my friends did not respect me or my life choices. Whether it came to something as serious as my career choices, or something as trivial as what game I should play I always had a friend berating me (or occasionally forcing me) to do what they think is right. Shit like this had been happening for a few years and it had all come to a boiling point when I played Gris. Unfortunately, my wife had to bear some of the heat of this frustration of mine as I groaned and complained impatiently as I sat watching her (a novice gamer) slowly work her way through levels.
That being said, my personal frustrations should not take any marks away from the game’s score. When I look back upon this game unfortunately these negative memories will tag along, but that does not mean the game itself is anything less of a work of art as a result. Heck, I think Gris’ journey is a great mirror for the journey I am on myself: I strive to become strong enough to set my boundaries firmly and choose whom I spend my time with more judiciously. Gris had to confront her demons repeatedly even after being stronger, and we all will have to in our lives too. I hope that everyone reading this will have the strength to pull ourselves out of whatever abyss we find ourselves in.
Concluding Words
Gris is an incredible game. I’m so glad that the studio gained so much success that they went on to work on more (seemingly successful) projects afterward. I strongly recommend that you play this game yourself, even if you already read the story as the experience is one-of-a-kind!! It’s hard to find a bargain like this.
I look forward to playing what else the devs at Nomada Studio have in store for me in the future. Until then (and beyond)? Stay awesome everyone:)
