We were born to die †

Indie Game Spotlight: GRIS

Get ready to feel all the feels as we showcase GRIS in this week’s Indie Game Spotlight. A 2D puzzle platformer, GRIS follows the story of a hopeful young girl lost in a beautiful, dreamlike world, who’s struggling to deal with a recent traumatic experience. 

Conrad Roset, the creative director of GRIS, was gracious enough to chat with us about the inspiration and concepts behind the game. GRIS is available now on Steam and Nintendo Switch!

What’s the inspiration behind GRIS?

We have taken a huge amount of references from everywhere we could, not only video games. Sure, Shadow of the Colossus or Journey are great influence, but also from outside the video game media: from Ghibli films (the wondrous characters from Spirited Away or Mononoke Hime) to Disney film’s backgrounds, Moebius compositions, Theo Jansen moving sculpture or Calder’s mobiles and a long list of etceteras.

Every frame in the game is a true piece of art. How long did it take to design the levels and maintain its watercolor aesthetic?

We spent the best part of a year designing the game as a whole. It was challenging, as I come from the world of illustration and I resisted to use repeated assets, I wanted GRIS to feel like an illustration itself. In the end, I’m really happy with the result, I think we managed a good performance-visuals balance.

The game has a lot to do with trauma and how we experience it. How do music and art help you portray these internal experiences?

We use color as a metaphor a lot, being as it is a really artistic, emotional game, we focused on capturing those emotions and their evolution through not only the audiovisual factor itself but also with how it changes and grows over time. 

How does this affect players?

That’s the thing: we hope it affects everyone differently. GRIS is an open to interpretation experience, and each player is supposed to draw their own personal conclusions from it. 

Will there be an art book available in the future?

Sure, we are preparing it! ;)