Gecko Gods – Review

I love a little guy. The littler (and goofier) the better. This obviously means I love a lizard, and geckos may have the best lil’ guy energy out of all lizards. Clambering all over the place, lounging about in the sun, leaving their tails everywhere. Just goofy lil’ dudes. When I first saw Gecko Gods at the Wholesome Direct last year, I thought it looked great, and when we covered it for the demo disc in September I knew it was something I was definitely going to play. Lucky me, that I got to check it out a little early. So let’s jump into the review and see if being a lil’ guy climbing about in the sun was just as much fun as it looks.

Gameplay

Gecko Gods is a 3D puzzle platformer where you play as a gecko tasked with awakening the Gods from their slumber. As you are made in the Gods image (they’re the titular Gecko Gods) you are the only one that possesses the unique skill set required to overcome the challenges across the sun soaked archipelago – that skill set primarily being able to walk on the ceiling, and grab stuff with your mouth.

It’s a simple game, and that isn’t a bad thing. Each island has a set of objectives for you to scamper over, solving puzzles, eating bugs and collecting relics. Most puzzles will have you grabbing levers to activate cables, rotating disks to redirect power or bounce light off mirrors, or finding gongs and bells to hurl yourself at. They’re all well designed, with levers being hidden up on the ceiling so you need to follow the cables up to them, or platforming that makes use of your little gecko feet’s ability to stick onto things at all angles.

When you’re not scrambling through old temples reawakening Gods, you’ll be exploring the rest of the islands on your own gecko sized boat. The game area is relatively small – so getting between the islands don’t take you too long, so I appreciate the fact that the Devs added a few challenges related to sailing in the game. There’s one island that needs you to sail through a course of lit up rings to activate the beacon on top, and another instance of something similar elsewhere. It’s a good use of the traversal mechanic to help keep the puzzles varied.

There’s also some combat, which I’m not sure is necessary. It consists of dashing into weird little constructs (which do pass the goofy lil guy check) until they smash and drop some money. As I said previously Gecko Gods is an easy game, and the combat doesn’t really present a challenge. In fact I was unaware you could actually take significant damage until I tried to swim across an area I clearly wasn’t supposed too and saw I had shed my tail when I got out the water. Shedding your tail after taking damage is a very fun idea, but damage is so infrequent you might go the entire game without noticing it as I almost did. Not that I’d prefer it to be more challenging – I think that may ruin the chill vibe the game is going for – potentially it’d just be better to not have combat at all.

Visuals and Sound

Speaking of the games vibes, they are wonderful. In terms of visuals, there’s a clear inspiration from Jean Giraud via Sable, with the same sun bleached peach hues during the day shifting through pinks and purples to star speckled blues and indigos in the evening. That’s to say, the game is beautiful and I frequently found myself climbing to the highest points of each island to look into the horizon and enjoy the view.

The inside of old temples are covered in wall paintings showing scenes of the Gods and worship, alongside depictions of what daily life may have looked like in eras past. The outsides are crumbling, with different entrances than you might think, due to them slowly sinking into the sands of the islands. It really feels like at one point this may have been full of geckos, frolicking in pools and munching on bugs in the sun – where as now it’s just you and the birds, who are content on helping you in your quest to wake the Gods.

The sound design is also fantastic, with your feet making different sounds depending on what surface you happen to be scampering across. It sounds like a small thing, but it’s so charming and clearly a lot of attention to detail was put into making sure each surface had it’s own unique sound. The music is for the most part chill and relaxing – much like what you’d expect from a low stakes lizard-y adventure, but kicks into more upbeat and adventurous notes when you’re venturing across the sea on your boat or taking on one of the islands trials. There was one or two moments when some of the music seemed to overlap in an unintended fashion – but it was few and far between and didn’t detract from the experience of the game.

Small Niggles

That’s not to say everything about the game is perfect. There was a few small issues I ran into in my roughly 6 hour play through. The most notable was the two crashes I had towards the end of the main quest. There’s a specific event that happens at the end of the final temple, which involves a timed challenge and twice upon failing the challenge the game crashed upon loading back into the scene before the segment. Luckily closing the game and reloading back in fixed it, but it was a little annoying given the rest of the game is pretty polished.

The other two small problem I had were around exploration. A big part of the game is climbing all over walls from all angles, and occasionally the camera and controls had a bit of a problem with this. Specifically if you are trying to move from a ceiling up onto a vertical piece of wall, sometimes the angle change and the fact the camera determines what way you’re walking ends with the game just yeeting you off the surface. There’s no fall damage, so it’s not a costly mistake, but it can make the game feel a little frustrating as you try and navigate around.

There’s also the very barebones map. There’s optional collectables such as insects and relics, and even though the islands have a checklist for each the map is essentially just blank so it’s very difficult to track where you might have been to find them. The game also doesn’t explain that you need to dash into insects to eat them, so I spent a bit of time trying to figure out why the interact button wasn’t allowing me to collect them.

Final Thoughts

The small issues don’t detract from the fantastic 6 hours I had squidging around as an increasingly more neon gecko, solving sliding block puzzles and sunning myself in my boat. If you’re looking for a short, relaxing experience full of charm with puzzles just tricky enough that you’ll need to think, but not too hard, Gecko Gods is the perfect Sunday afternoon game to chill out with. Oh and yes, you can customise your gecko.