Out for PC/Steam and Playstation 4, GNOG feels like a pop-up book with an AR component. Players select a module (heads of the theme you’re looking like, reminding me of Might Max/Polly Pocket) that opens up like a pop-up storybook with achievement flags. You click and pull on various parts of the “story” for it to progress with minimal direction. For example, in the frog-esque story I tried, I had to click all the clickables in a wordless story that I think was expressing the live-cycle of the butterfly-moth-creatures the frog-creature eats. That “opened up” into a room where I found two lightbulbs to attract the moths to the frog, which jumped off an object holding down a latch I could pull up, which gave the exterior frog spots that I could click to unlock more of the “puzzle.”
The game’s bright colors and wordless narration was cute, but felt like sugar-art: beautiful, but maybe not exactly the most healthy snack. As an adult, I didn’t feel like it had much depth beyond its style, but would probably be better for very young kids unable to read, at least when compared to a lot of other children’s entertainment.
Going Small
It could be that the demo I played was too simple, as the AR on the pad I used had some issues and added little to the game aside from making some puzzles a bit more obvious. Perhaps I was missing something that would have been revealed had I stuck with the game longer. GNOG didn’t seem like a bad game, but one that felt would appeal to a small audience.
