The third episode of a short series on games I discovered at EGX Rezzed 2017.
GNOG (KO-OP Collective) has been a presence at the distant edges of my awareness, having been in development for a while. It’s due out on PS4 soon and at Rezzed I was finally able to discover what kind of thing it is.
In a word: Vectorpark. If you’ve ever played with Windosill (Vectorpark, 2009) or Metamorphabet (Vectorpark, 2015), then GNOG is in that wacky toy category, a secret box if you will. GNOG presents you with an collection of mysterious packages, each of which appears to contain a toy which you must “solve”. This basically means twiddling with knobs and switches to discover it’s secrets which suggests I could even drag in The Room (Fireproof Games, 2012) as another touchstone… but I’d gladly award GNOG the gold badge in the surreal category.
I found it challenging although this was partly down to my unfamiliarity with a Playstation controller. Much of my progress arose from random clicking of items but, as I have often said, this is not necessarily a bad thing: secret box games are all about little revelations and a dialogue between developer and player, less a mechanical framework to navigate. The second box, which contained a toy spaceship, definitely required a little more thinking than random jabbing to figure out. I had a sneaking suspicion that the packages could have held other secrets other than the main solution but I have no idea if that’s true or not.
GNOG will be coming to PC and Mac via Steam at some later date. Check out the website if you want to know more.
Interested in other games I’ve dabbled with? Check out the series index!
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“9 musical levels” and “A dynamic soundtrack” sounds interesting. I recently completed Samorost 3 with Hai and that’s such a satisfyingly musical game, even the collectibles are musical layers/samples that you can toggle on and off on a separate screen creating all kinds of lovely mixes. I never did check out FRACT OSC.
As mentioned on Twitter, Joel, I’m looking forward to this. Gaming needs more of Vectorpark’s toy box whimsy.
I wonder how Vignettes is doing…
David Kanaga is now doing the music for Vignettes I believe.
Yeah I just noticed!