Have You Played... Gorogoa?
Part illustration puzzler, part bedtime story
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
When was the last time you moved beautifully drawn tiles around to unfurl a charming interactive story world? Be honest with me. I won't judge you.
Oh who am I kidding? I'm judging you incredibly harshly. To stop this from happening/worsening I'm going to prescribe Jason Roberts' illustration puzzler, Gorogoa. The full game is still a work in progress but there's a delightful demo on the website which you can and should play.
You must guide a little boy around a puzzle world as he investigates a mysterious dragon, prancing through the street near his window. In order to do so you move the picture tiles around, sometimes deconstructing them to form layers, sometimes recombining them to produce new pathways.
For me the discovery stage was uplifting but then I eded up playing it through over and over. It ended up being a soothing bedtime story-like experience which I tried to memorise in order to know the game's every beat and therefore minimise any breaks in story flow. I still come back to it sometimes when I can't sleep.