Review: Great God Grove is a good, silly game

Great Spirit Forest At its core, it’s a massive fetch quest. One person needs something, you go get it and bring it to them, and repeat that pattern throughout the play. This had the potential to become a tedious drudgery, but instead the concept became something utterly fascinating.

Great Spirit Forest puts you in the shoes of an unknown god. You’re like a cowboy, but your job is to fight the gods. You are sent to an island inhabited by many different gods of the world on a mission to fix a serious problem. A rift was opening in the sky, but the gods were too busy arguing with each other to do anything about it. You need to get them to talk again so the world can be saved.

You’re assisted in your quest by the Megapon, a lip-shaped megaphone that functions like a vacuum cleaner. You memorize the words of the characters you talk to, then throw them at other characters who need to hear those words. That’s the whole game. You are the cosmic peacemaker who bluntly forces everyone to listen to what they need to hear.

Let me give you an example of how Great Spirit Forest work. At the beginning of the game, you find yourself in an area that is constantly raining because of the tears of the local god, who is saddened by the disappearance of your predecessor, King. So now you have to talk to the locals and ask them to say something encouraging that he would have said, swallow those words and shoot them at the crying god to calm her down that.

While most of the game involves finding the correct words to progress, there are also plenty of useless joke phrases that exist just to spark some silly interactions. Like sucking in speech bubbles and saying “Boo!” and use it to terrify everyone around you or shower random compliments on anyone you feel needs it.

It’s a simple concept but Great Spirit Forest Extremely creative in how to approach it. The game is divided into a series of zones, each with its own contending gods, and each of these zones presents a unique challenge to overcome. And they were truly challenging, with many sections making me watch them over and over again until I could piece together the words I needed to say to progress.

This is the place Great Spirit Forest shine. Often, the words you need to combine are less obvious than you expect. In one area, I had to wake up someone who was blocking my way, and even though I tried shouting various sentences, they still wouldn’t wake up. It wasn’t until I realized I could translate the metaphorical phrase “open your eyes” uttered by another character and make it literal. There are so many moments like this, you will bang your head against the table for a while until suddenly “aha!” moment begins and you realize that the seemingly useless phrase in your inventory is the key to everything.

Inventory is also an inspired move as it limits you to a total of five items. Not just phrases, anything you suck with a vacuum will be here, including beach balls, pumpkins or wooden planks. This means you can’t force these puzzles by collecting every phrase in the area and throwing them until something sticks. You have to pay attention, be mindful of people’s needs and desires, and actively look for what might make sense and eliminate anything that doesn’t.

It helps the world of Great Spirit Forest filled with bizarre characters. This is not a serious game. This is most evident in the amount of time you spend interacting with the local detective force, the Bizzyboys. These guys are incompetent, often pursuing the most useless leads or bickering with each other while you do the actual work. They are also responsible for the chaotic live-action puppet shows that appear in each region. Even though their purpose was to explain the lore of the world, they mostly left me confused. That’s a compliment, by the way, because manic energy is what makes it happen Great Spirit Forest so attractive.

This applies to most of the cast, they are a bunch of misfit weirdos. Most people have odd speech habits, a boisterous personality, or a strong reaction to everything you say. However, despite all this, their problem is still solvable. Even at their silliest, their complaints make sense. In a game where puzzle solving and comedy are both staples, it’s easy for one side to get in the way of the other but Great Spirit Forest keeps its puzzles grounded while layering the jokes on top. No LucasArts-style “monkey wrench” puzzles here.

The art style helps create the vibe. It’s similar to Paper Mariowhere cutout-style 2D textures are layered in a pseudo-3D top-down view. The character designs look like they were plucked from a turn-of-the-century Saturday morning cartoon, where asymmetry and exaggerated features dominate. Your character is especially notable in their strangeness, with hair covering almost all of their face except for a persistent grin. Meanwhile, every visit to a deity sees them thrusting their ridiculous faces into your field of vision with theatrical flair to every word they say.

That said, while I did enjoy what I did Great Spirit Forest have to offer, sometimes it can be a bit much. Its tone is mostly in-your-face and it rarely lets up. Most of the time I’m happy to go along with it, but there are times when I have to turn the game off for a while until I’m in the right mood. At times, some of the character’s quirky statements were also a bit confusing and in rare cases, made it more difficult to understand what was being said. Its humor is definitely an acquired taste, and it’s likely some players won’t click on it.

The only other major complaint I have about the game is how unwieldy managing all the speech bubbles can be at times. Memorizing words takes a few seconds, and if you’re trying out different words in different positions, shooting the speech bubble and taking the time to re-memorize it before it disappears can be tedious. Typically, this can also result in an active conversation taking place while your inventory is open, and removed speech bubbles appear on the screen, making it cluttered and nearly impossible to readable.

Additionally, limited inventory space sometimes causes problems for puzzles that require multiple speech bubbles to solve. A song you must assemble at one point in the game requires four lines, so interacting with other characters becomes much more difficult when all but one of your inventory slots are blocked.

Final, Great Spirit Forest is a great fun take on the importance of good communication. If you like puzzle games, Double Fine works or UndertaleYou’ll find a lot to love here.

Great Spirit Forest available on PC, Switch and Xbox Series X/S.

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