Ghost Giant Review – Boo-tiful Dioramas

A VR game lives or dies by how well it can bring you into its world. The game itself can have the most basic mechanics in the world but if it can make me feel like I’m there, then I’m sold. Ghost Giant sold me.

Ghost Giant
Developer: Zoink Games
Price: $24.99
Platform: PSVR & Oculus Quest
MonsterVine was supplied with an Oculus Quest code for review

Ghost Giant puts you in the role of the titular giant, who meets a cute little cat named Louis who’s the only one who seems to be able to see you. After Louis’ initial shock at coming face to face with what’s a literal god, you tag along with him as he goes about his day working on his family’s farm or running errands ‘round the town. Your interactions with Louis are the brunt of the game and it helps that you can’t help but feel endeared to this little cat; it’s the small touches like creating a secret handshake with him that you can initiate at any moment that helps strengthen your relationship with him. What initially starts as a simple setup eventually blossoms a heartwarming tale, that can be at times both incredibly heartbreaking and relatable, with a lovably charming cast of characters.

Almost like a theater show, each level slowly bathes the scenery in light as it reveals your play space, and every level’s reveal is as breathtaking as the last. Towering over these locations and marveling over every bit of detail, you almost feel like you’ve been thrust into a Laika Studios film. When you’re in control, you can use your massive ghostly arms to interact with the world and basically solve some fairly simple puzzles across the game’s handful of levels.

You’ll do pretty simple things like staking boxes with a crane, or other times grabbing two clouds and banging them together to get them to rain so the seeds you just planted can grow. The latter moments are definitely the highlights of the game because despite being a pretty simple (and heavily telegraphed) puzzle, it still manages to pull you into the world that Ghost Giant sets up for you. I do wish the game was a bit cleverer with its puzzle design though. While very clearly pushing the story as the main focus, many times I’d look at an environment and already know what puzzle it’s about to drop and I’m just waiting for it to start so I can immediately solve it. Being a giant ghostly figure offers a lot of potential that the game doesn’t always fully capitalize on.

Something that never got old was being able to rip the roof off of buildings, or even just peeking through a window, to see what characters are doing inside their homes. Being a sort of silent observer as these characters go about their day is definitely a fun feeling to experience, however, if I were to knock Ghost Giant for anything it’d be that the world isn’t as interactive as you would want it to be. You can’t grab any random object you want, only a few predefined ones, and it would have been really neat if the game leaned a bit harder into its concept of being a ghostly giant who can mess around with the denizens of this world. The most you could do, outside of the predetermined puzzle reactions, is poke a character and see their immediate confusion.

I, unfortunately, encountered a few technical hiccups in regards to the game’s physics and a graphical glitch. A few times I had the textures on the ghost giant’s arms turning black, which went away after a bit, and an issue with objects clashing with the game’s physics. Throwing things never feels super accurate, almost like an invisible wall is narrowing the field of my tosses, and sometimes when going to grab an item I found myself having to press the grip button multiple times to finally get a hold on it.

The Final Word
Clocking in at around 2 hours, Ghost Giant isn’t the most lasting experience, but its picture book popup world is sure to stay with you for much longer.

– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good