Save the world in Great God Grove by firing messages out of a news megaphone at Picasso-faced weirdos
An efficient post delivery system, out later this year
Tropes aren't actually bad, right? Like, I'm not actually mad that a lot of games use 'the world is ending and you have to save it' as an inciting incident. When people complain about something being 'tropey' I think often what they're complaining about is that the work isn't putting any kind of interesting spin on the tropes. Great God Grove is a weirdo puzzle game where you have to stop the world from ending, and the only way you can communicate is by sucking up things people say to you and then firing them back out of your news cannon. It's coming to PC in 2024. Jolly good.
The world ending seems to be a common enough event in Great God Grove, and whenever it happens the gods all come together to prevent it. In this case, though, the god of communication has started a load of fights and exited stage left, meaning nobody can un-fight. Because you're the godly postman, you still have your news cannon (the Megapon), which can suck up messages, clothes, etc., and fire them back out. This is the ability you use to solve puzzles - someone shouts at you that people need to wake up and open their eyes, so you snarfle that up in the Megapon, and then hoof it out at a sleeping dude standing in your way somewhere else. Easy peasy.
The gods themselves are a strange-looking bunch with slightly odd proportions and geometrically-upsetting faces. A bunch of them dress like they were dragged backwards through a regional TKMaxx. Relatable! Why should we assume a being with supernatural power would have their shit together? Many polytheistic religions don't, which is part of the fun, and the gods here are gods of stuff like Teamwork and Love Songs, which has a kind of Pratchett vibe. They're called stuff like Bronch and Bayker, treading the like between 'saying words wrong with your friends' humour and 'calling dogs stupid internet names' humour. I'm into it! More games should make your friends assume you're getting facts wrong or have been day-drinking when you try to explain them.
This is by LimboLane, the same team who made Smile For Me, another game where your communication was limited (in that case to nodding or shaking your head). The studio's style is immediately recogniseable. They also use puppets in cutscenes. I'm all about devs making weird stuff because they think it's cool. Catch EA letting devs put a puppet in their game. Psh. Great God Grove is out later this year. You can check out the Steam page now.