Gris

Gris came to PlayStation 4 in 2019 as the visually most striking title from the Spanish studio Nomada Studio, which collaborated with illustrator Conrad Roset. The game follows a young girl moving through a landscape that gradually awakens from shades of gray into full color, symbolizing her journey through processing grief and loss. In terms of gameplay it's a calm platformer with no dying and no time pressure — the player solves simple environmental puzzles and gradually gains new movement abilities that open up further parts of the world, much like in classic metroidvanias, just without combat or danger. Each of the four colored chapters adds a new ability as well as a new visual motif — transforming into heavy stone, flying on gusts of wind, or swimming through the depths — and the emotional tone of the whole landscape shifts along with the color.

The game's greatest strength is its visual style — watercolor-painted backgrounds that respond fluidly to the player's movement and change color according to the emotional register of each chapter, while the heroine herself literally falls apart into pieces in moments of despair, pieces that must be put back together. The music, composed by Berlinist, accompanies each scene with a feel for dynamics and quietly builds as the story moves toward resolution. On PS4 the game ran smoothly, and the higher resolution only highlighted the detail of the hand-drawn surfaces, which otherwise feel like a living gallery.

Gris received wide acclaim for its treatment of a heavy subject without a single line of dialogue, and it is often cited as an example of how a game can function as a sensitive artistic statement about sorrow, denial and accepting loss. Thanks to its short length and gentle pace it's accessible even to players who otherwise avoid action titles, and to this day it remains one of the most frequently recommended emotional experiences on the platform, often mentioned in the same breath as titles like Journey.

Why play it: For players looking for a short, sensitive artistic experience about sorrow and accepting loss without a single line of dialogue — accessible even to those who otherwise avoid action games, often mentioned in the same breath as Journey.