Gris - game as therapy
Not sure how many times you will hear me say this, but here I will say it again: “I’m not really a gamer, in fact I really suck at playing games”.
I’m okay with games that’s about creating stuff at my own pace, but I suck at games that’s all about timing, moving, fighting, combos -- yikes. Perhaps because I’m not very coordinated, or I’m just not that competitive in nature, I’ve never found the motivation or confidence to play through any games that require a lot of control and accuracy. I’ve always been an audience ever since early days when my cousins used to hangout and play Street Fighter or Super Mario together.
I picked up Gris because of the art, and I’m curious to see if it’s a good time to play during this difficult and bizarre time of isolation and mass solitude due to the COVID pandemic.
Very unexpectedly, the 11 hours of playing actually taught me to grow and heal from my own fears of failure.
The game was quite hard for me at the start. It’s very frustrating as I keep falling off when I need to time my jump, there are places where there seems to be no way out and I’m fully stuck. I was only in the middle of level 1 and I seemed to have been stuck in an impossible puzzle. Surely the game is broken. I was pretty set that I won’t play this game again, it’s my basic stance that I shan’t waste time on any game that is too difficult or “unreasonable”.
But I kinda wanted to see the rest of the game though, because the scenes I’ve played so far are all so different. I sneaked back the next day, and started a new game from the beginning assuming that’d fix where I had broken the game. I realise that I got through everything much faster but ended up at the same stuck point -- but this time I solved the ”impossible puzzle” after a few try, and that feeling was incredible.
From there I kept going. Although there were so much frustration and so many times I feel utterly stuck, but there’s something about the game that keeps me coming back. It’s not just the taste of victory over a hard challenge was so ever sweet; it’s also because the game has a magic that fuels my curiosity. We think about beautiful game art and sound as “aesthetic”, but in Gris, the mind blowing arts that’s so mesmerising in every scene is what kept me going. The ever unfolding epic beauty gave me an astounding joy as if I’m making some groundbreaking discovery. The changing mechanics and variety of puzzles are also fuelling up sense of discovery. The curiosity it inspires pushes me to try, try and try again, despite the difficulty.
I also really enjoyed the growth of my character in the game as she gradually adopts new ability, from walking, to running, to jumping, to soaring, to swimming, to diving, to singing -- this feels like growth both literally and metaphorically. It’s interesting to notice the growth in myself during my 11 hours of play too -- I started with so much self doubt (I was certain that I won’t reach the end of the game), and gradually was able to do harder and harder moves with more and more accuracy, solving puzzles that I couldn’t when I first encounter them. There’s a huge sense of accomplishment as I manage something that I thought was hopelessly unattainable.
I feel something inside me was healed, as the game propelled me to learn and grow, and shutter each challenge I encounter. I think that something is my pessimistic view about how things are going to turn out, and my doubt in my own ability to complete the hero’s journey, as the hero.
This surprisingly delightful experience of growth gave me a lot of food for thought on this topic of how video games can influence and coach us in engaging ways that’s unexpectedly effective.
[All images are from Gris the game]














