Gomo is brought to us by developer Fishcow Studio and publisher Daedalic Entertainment (developer of The Night of the Rabbit, Memoria, and publisher of Journey of a Roach). This is Fishcow’s first game.

Watch the trailer:

Plot

“Gomo is on a mission to help his dog Dingo, who has been captured by aliens. A great adventure awaits Gomo – players will explore a comic-style world using classic point-and-click controls, solving puzzles by collecting and using items. Players will also encounter obstacles they need to overcome, for example by creating a balloon, and can find and reveal many secrets. The gameplay of Gomo is non-violent, focused on puzzles and exploration, and centered on the unique, hand-drawn art style of the game.”

I’m pretty certain that Gomo is targeted at a younger audience than myself; the plot above is the only story to speak of (and you never learn either character’s name in-game). The game has no dialogue; the only speaking is done by aliens, who speak in a mumble. A space mumble, if you will. I’m sure other aliens understand. There’s also two instances of juvenile/toilet humor, which is pretty much the only thing I don’t find funny. The rest of the humor is slapstick and rather cute, if not laugh-out-loud.

Graphics and Sound

Gomo is a beautiful, hand-drawn game, and it absolutely exudes charm. I loved discovering what was going to be on the next screen, and there are a ton of small details that add a lot to the atmosphere. Gomo himself is expressive and has a lot of personality for being a sackcloth doll. I love the animations of his arms! He can stretch pretty far, and will undergo idle animations and go to sleep after a short time of inactivity. I had sluggish performance at the beginning, but running the game in a window (as opposed to full screen) made the game run smooth as silk. I really loved the music of Gomo; there’s new music for every screen, and all of it is really fun and of high quality. The only small complaint I have in this category is that the cursor is sometimes the standard Windows cursor and sometimes an in-game cursor; this is helpful when you’re looking for interactive spots (they change to the Gomo cursor when hovering over one), but I think they should have made a neutral, in-game cursor, because the standard Windows cursor seems out of place.

Gameplay

Gomo is standard point-and-click, but you don’t use anything except the left mouse button. Your inventory is at the top of the screen and holds three items; most of the time, you only use one or two of these slots. Puzzles are very, VERY easy. Normally, I need to consult a walkthrough fairly often in an adventure game; here, I only did this a few times, two of which were related to the type of puzzle (not traditional adventure game puzzles). There aren’t a lot of hot spots, and they’re easy to find; you can’t look at anything, which is kind of strange for an adventure game, but makes sense because there’s no dialogue. There’s very little backtracking; you’re pretty much confined to one screen until you can figure out how to progress to the next one.

I want to describe those puzzles I mentioned earlier that I had to use a walkthrough for – I felt that they were out of place in what’s otherwise a point-and-click adventure game. One was the classic scrambled puzzle – nine spaces, eight pieces, and you have to shuffle the pieces around until you make the picture whole again. The other was a commonly-seen puzzle on the App Store: you rearrange bricks (or, in Gomo‘s case, clouds) so that you can make your way through. If I hadn’t had a video walkthrough, I probably would have been trapped on these two puzzles forever, because I’ve never been able to do them and they frustrate me.

The game took me 114 minutes to beat and there are no achievements. I think this length of game for $10 is perhaps a bit steep, especially since there’s no replay value. There are a few bonus games to unlock, but by the end of the game I had only unlocked one, and I have no clue where I could have missed unlocking the other two. The one I unlocked was a whack-a-mole game with the aliens.

Final Thoughts

Gomo is a cute, quick adventure game for kids or the young at heart. Older players who want a challenge or a long game are going to be disappointed.

Score: B- (but an A for younger kids!)

Get Gomo from Steam or GOG for $9.99; both currently have it on sale for $7.19 until December 13th. Check out the official site, and follow the game on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Fishcow has an official site too.

[Disclaimer: A review code was provided for me to review this game.]