Gris

GRIS is a 2018 puzzle-platform game developed by Barcelona-based Nomada Studio and published by Devolver Digital. It debuted for Nintendo Switch and Windows in December 2018. Subsequent releases brought the game to macOS, iOS, Android, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Director Adrian Cuevas led the project, and artist Conrad Roset supplied the hand-painted visual style for which it became known. Berlinist composed the score. Rather than presenting dialogue, menus full of exposition, or conventional combat, GRIS tells its story through movement, changing scenery, music, and the gradual recovery of colors in a crumbling fantasy world around its protagonist, Gris. The protagonist, Gris, begins after losing her voice and falling through a monochrome landscape. Her dress functions as the central gameplay device: it first becomes a heavy square-like form that lets her resist wind and break certain surfaces, then gains other abilities as the journey continues. Each region is associated with a color, including red, green, blue, and yellow, and restoring those colors changes both the world and the traversal tools. Players navigate platforming sequences and puzzles, collect points that form constellations, and encounter animal-like figures. There are no enemies to defeat and no game-over state in the usual sense. Nomada Studio was founded in 2016 by Cuevas and Roger Mendoza, with GRIS serving as its first game. The project’s public profile grew rapidly after its release, and it received nominations and awards across art, music, and independent-game categories. At The Game Awards 2019, GRIS was nominated for Games for Impact. It won the award for Best Animated Video Game at the 2019 Annie Awards, an honor associated with animation, and it was also recognized at the 2019 Game Developers Choice Awards, where it won Best Visual Art. These accolades reflected the attention given to Roset’s artwork and Berlinist’s soundtrack. GRIS’s presentation deliberately avoids spoken explanation, leaving the precise meaning of its imagery open to interpretation. Its opening image, the heroine’s lost voice, and later scenes involving a giant bird, a dark underwater area, and a hostile black substance have nevertheless led many players to read the game as an account of grief and emotional recovery. Nomada Studio followed GRIS with Neva, announced in 2023 and released in 2024; that game reunited the studio with Roset and Berlinist. GRIS remains the work that established Nomada’s international reputation, pairing side-scrolling exploration with art that shifts from colorless ruins to saturated landscapes.