Gris did something I was not prepared for. I started it on a quiet evening expecting a pretty platformer — the kind of game you play with half your attention while the other half wanders. Within twenty minutes I had put the phone down, turned the lights off, and just sat with it. The colour coming back to the world. The music knowing exactly when to arrive. The specific feeling of being carried through someone else’s grief and recognising something in it.
That feeling is what this article is about. Not games that look like Gris — there are plenty of those — but games that do what Gris does: tell a story entirely through image and atmosphere, trust the player to feel rather than be told, and leave a mark that lingers after the credits.
What kind of game are you looking for?
The games closest to Gris
Neva — same studio, same painterly language, same emotional weight. More action, equally devastating. Hoa — Gris at its most peaceful. No challenge, pure beauty. Voyage — two figures, an alien world, no words. Play it with someone. Planet of Lana — the same visual ambition wrapped around a girl and her companion. Shady Part of Me — mechanic and emotion inseparable, like Gris at its best.
If any of those sound like exactly what you were looking for, you already have your answer. If you want to go deeper, everything below is for you.
Games like Gris for the emotional storytelling
Gris is a game about grief — specifically about the slow, non-linear work of processing loss and finding your way back to colour. These games understand that same emotional territory. Not all of them are gentle. Some go considerably darker. But all of them trust the player to feel something rather than simply play something.
Neva (2024)
From the studio behind Gris — a woman and her wolf companion across four seasons of a decaying world. Same painterly visual language, same emotional seriousness, but with a full combat system that gives it an intensity Gris never had.
Why it feels like Gris: The bond between Alba and Neva communicates entirely through gesture and shared danger — no dialogue, no exposition, just the relationship and the world falling apart around it. The ending lands harder than almost anything in the genre.
What sets it apart: More action-focused than Gris — Neva has a full combat system that demands real engagement. The emotional payload is the same. The journey to get there is considerably more demanding.
🛒 Buy Neva DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Shady Part of Me (2020)
A girl who cannot stand light and her shadow navigating two dimensions simultaneously. French debut, announced and released the same night at The Game Awards 2020. Melancholic, psychological, and quietly devastating.
Why it feels like Gris: The mechanic and the emotional theme are inseparable — exactly what Gris does with colour and grief. Here the dual dimension mechanic is a direct metaphor for the psychological journey. You feel the story through the design rather than being told it.
What sets it apart: More explicitly psychological than Gris — the subject matter is mental health rather than grief in the abstract. The dual dimension mechanic is genuinely inventive and unlike anything else in the genre.
🛒 Buy Shady Part of Me DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
The MISSING: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories (2018)
Directed by Hidetaka Suehiro, The MISSING follows J.J. Macfield across a surreal island where physical injury becomes the puzzle mechanic. Dark, strange, and built around a narrative reveal that recontextualises everything before it.
Why it feels like Gris: The mechanic is the story — J.J.’s relationship with her own body is both the puzzle system and the emotional core, in exactly the way Gris’s colour mechanic embodies grief. The emotional subject matter — identity, self-acceptance — is handled with the same sincerity Gris brings to loss.
What sets it apart: Considerably darker and more disturbing than Gris. The self-harm mechanic is not for everyone and worth knowing about before you start. But for players who can engage with it, the emotional payoff is extraordinary.
🛒 Buy The MISSING DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Eternal Hope (2020)
A Brazilian Ghibli-inspired puzzle platformer following Ti’bi — a boy travelling between two dimensions to retrieve his lost love’s soul. Short, emotional, and quietly beautiful.
Why it feels like Gris: Loss as the driving force, a journey told through image rather than dialogue, and a Ghibli-inspired visual warmth that puts it in the same emotional register. The most direct Gris comparison on this list in terms of tone and subject matter.
What sets it apart: Shorter and rougher than Gris — a debut game with the ambition of something bigger. The dimension-switching mechanic gives it a puzzle identity that Gris does not have. Free on PC.
🛒 Buy Eternal Hope DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
My Memory of Us (2018)
A black and white 2.5D puzzle platformer — two children navigating a robot occupation that allegorises the Nazi invasion of Poland. Dual-character mechanics, stealth sections, Patrick Stewart narration, and an emotional weight that earns every moment.
Why it feels like Gris: The use of colour as an emotional signal — black and white world with selective colour — directly echoes Gris’s visual language. The quiet, melancholic tone and the wordless moments between the two children carry the same emotional register.
What sets it apart: Rooted in real historical trauma in a way Gris is not — the allegorical weight is heavier and more specific. The dual-character stealth sections give it a gameplay identity entirely its own.
🛒 Buy My Memory of Us DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Games like Gris for the hand-painted visuals
Gris looks like a watercolour painting in motion — every frame composed, every colour choice deliberate. These games share that same commitment to handcrafted visual beauty, each with a distinct artistic identity that makes them immediately recognisable.
Hoa (2021)
A tiny fairy returns to the forest that raised her. Hand-painted, gentle, built entirely around beauty and atmosphere. Two hours of pure visual warmth.
Why it feels like Gris: The hand-painted aesthetic is the closest to Gris of anything on this list — lush, detailed, and composed like illustration rather than game art. Every environment feels like a page from a picture book you want to live inside.
What sets it apart: Warmer and less emotionally demanding than Gris. No grief, no darkness — just a beautiful world and a gentle journey through it. The gentlest game in the genre by some distance.
🛒 Buy Hoa DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Voyage (2021)
Two survivors cross a stunning alien world together, communicating entirely through gesture. No dialogue, no combat, no fail states. Made by two brothers in Sweden. Play it with someone.
Why it feels like Gris: The hand-drawn illustration style and the wordless emotional journey put it squarely in Gris territory. Each environment is composed like a painting — vast, detailed, and immediately distinctive.
What sets it apart: Cooperative — designed for two players, though playable solo. No challenge, no enemies, no fail states. Two hours of quiet that earns every minute.
🛒 Buy Voyage DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Projection: First Light (2020)
A young girl navigating a world built from shadow puppetry — silhouettes against warm light, inspired by traditional puppet theatre from Indonesia, China, Greece, and Cambodia. One of the most visually distinctive games in the genre.
Why it feels like Gris: The theatrical handcrafted visual identity is immediately striking in the same way Gris’s watercolour aesthetic is — you know within seconds that this is something made with genuine artistic intention rather than assembled from generic assets.
What sets it apart: The shadow puppet mechanic — manipulating light sources to reshape the shadows you walk on — gives it a puzzle identity unlike anything else on this list. Culturally specific in a way Gris is not.
🛒 Buy Projection: First Light DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Never Alone (2014)
A young Iñupiat girl and her arctic fox companion through a blizzard-swept world of genuine Alaskan Native folklore. Built in collaboration with the community whose stories it tells.
Why it feels like Gris: The visual identity is immediately handcrafted and distinctive — spirit animals rendered in the visual language of traditional Iñupiat art, environments that feel illustrated rather than rendered. The wordless companion bond carries the emotional weight in the same way Gris’s imagery does.
What sets it apart: Rooted in a specific living culture — the most culturally grounded game on this list. The documentary unlockables give it an educational dimension no other game here has.
🛒 Buy Never Alone DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
A Juggler’s Tale (2021)
A string-controlled puppet escaping danger through a dark fairytale world — presented entirely as a live puppet theatre performance. Narrated, theatrical, and visually unlike anything else in the genre.
Why it feels like Gris: The handcrafted visual identity is immediate and distinctive — every environment looks built and painted rather than rendered. The theatrical staging gives it the same sense of being inside a composed artistic work rather than a game.
What sets it apart: Narrated throughout — the puppet theatre framing means there is a voice guiding you, which is the opposite of Gris’s silence. The string mechanic, where your puppet’s movements are physically constrained by the strings above her, is genuinely clever.
🛒 Buy A Juggler’s Tale DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Games like Gris for the wordless atmosphere
Gris never explains itself. No dialogue, no text, no tutorial — just a world that unfolds through image and music. These games share that same trust in the player to feel the story rather than be told it.
Silt (2022)
A lone diver descends into a monochrome underwater abyss, possessing sea creatures to survive. Hand-drawn in ink, completely wordless, unlike anything else in the genre.
Why it feels like Gris: Total silence, an ancient world told entirely through what you see, and a hand-drawn visual identity that feels genuinely artistic rather than assembled.
What sets it apart: Dark and monochrome where Gris is colourful and hopeful. The possession mechanic gives it a puzzle identity all its own.
🛒 Buy Silt DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
FAR: Lone Sails (2018)
A solitary journey across a dried-out ocean in a steam-powered vehicle, through the remnants of a collapsed civilisation. No dialogue, no explanation, just the road and what remains.
Why it feels like Gris: The meditative pace, the painterly environments, and the wordless emotional arc — you understand what has been lost without being told. The atmosphere does everything.
What sets it apart: Vehicle management rather than platforming — you maintain a steam engine rather than navigate a world on foot. More mechanical, equally atmospheric.
🛒 Buy FAR: Lone Sails DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Planet of Lana (2023)
A girl and her animal companion cross a hand-painted alien world threatened by invading machines. Warm, beautiful, and built around a bond that develops entirely without dialogue.
Why it feels like Gris: The environmental storytelling carries everything — no dialogue, no exposition, just the world and what it shows you. The hand-painted visual quality puts it in the same artistic register.
What sets it apart: Warmer and more narrative-driven than Gris. The companion mechanic gives it a cooperative puzzle identity and a relationship arc that Gris does not have.
🛒 Buy Planet of Lana DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Deer & Boy (2026)
A runaway boy and an orphaned fawn across forests, caves, and dreamlike landscapes. No dialogue — the bond between them is built entirely through shared danger and small gestures of affection.
Why it feels like Gris: Grief processed through movement and image, a world that tells its story without words, and a visual warmth that puts it in the same emotional register as Gris at its most tender.
What sets it apart: The companion mechanic — the deer grows from a fragile newborn you protect to a powerful equal. The relationship evolves through gameplay rather than cutscenes.
🛒 Buy Deer & Boy Check deals at Fanatical
Little Orpheus (2020)
A Soviet cosmonaut recounts impossible underground adventures — dinosaurs, ancient civilisations, mushroom kingdoms. Warm, funny, and completely delighted by its own absurdity.
Why it feels like Gris: The cinematic presentation and the sense of moving through a world that is entirely its own — visually distinctive, atmospherically consistent, and built around the journey rather than the challenge.
What sets it apart: Narrated and funny — the tonal opposite of Gris. The most cheerful game on this list by some distance.
🛒 Buy Little Orpheus DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Games like Gris but darker
Gris is melancholic but never frightening. These games share its atmospheric DNA and its trust in wordless storytelling — but take the emotional register somewhere considerably darker.
Inside (2016)
A boy runs through a grey authoritarian world toward an ending nobody has fully agreed on. Wordless, relentless, and one of the most discussed games of the last decade.
Why it feels like Gris: No dialogue, no HUD, a story told entirely through what you see. The same trust in the player to feel rather than be told.
What sets it apart: Considerably darker and more disturbing. The ending stays with you for days. The single most recommended game on this list.
🛒 Buy Inside DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Little Nightmares (2017)
A small child in a yellow raincoat navigating a world of grotesque oversized adults. The genre’s most effective horror experience.
Why it feels like Gris: Wordless, atmospheric, and built around a vulnerable protagonist in a world that dwarfs her. The scale dynamic creates the same feeling of being small inside something vast.
What sets it apart: Horror rather than melancholy. Where Gris makes you feel grief, Little Nightmares makes you feel dread.
🛒 Buy Little Nightmares DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Limbo (2010)
A small boy in a monochrome world that wants to kill him. The game that started the modern wave of atmospheric cinematic platformers.
Why it feels like Gris: Wordless, atmospheric, and built entirely around image and sound. The founding text of the emotional register Gris works in.
What sets it apart: Monochrome and deliberately unsettling. More puzzle-focused and considerably more lethal than Gris.
🛒 Buy Limbo DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Inmost (2019)
Three interconnected characters moving through a dark pixel-art world tied together by grief and loss. Moody, emotionally heavy, and personal in a way that catches you off guard.
Why it feels like Gris: Grief as the central subject, atmosphere doing the emotional work, and an ending that reframes everything before it. The most direct thematic parallel to Gris on this list.
What sets it apart: Three playable characters, darker and more oppressive than Gris. The pixel art gives it a visual identity entirely its own.
🛒 Buy Inmost DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
DARQ (2019)
A boy named Lloyd cannot wake up — trapped in a nightmare where gravity and geometry follow dream logic. Dark, surreal, and built around spatial puzzles that refuse to behave.
Why it feels like Gris: Surreal world-building, atmospheric dread, and a protagonist navigating something that should not exist — the same dreamlike quality Gris has, taken somewhere darker.
What sets it apart: The gravity rotation mechanic turns every room into a spatial puzzle. More intellectually demanding than Gris, more unsettling than melancholic.
🛒 Buy DARQ DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Games like Gris for beginners
Gris is one of the most accessible games in the genre — no fail states, no real challenge, just the experience. These games sit in the same territory. Start here if you are new to cinematic platformers.
- Hoa — the gentlest game in the genre. Hand-painted, peaceful, completely without tension.
- Voyage — cooperative, no enemies, no fail states. Two hours of quiet. Play it with someone.
- Deer & Boy — warm, accessible, and emotionally affecting without being dark. Four hours.
- Little Orpheus — funny, light, and completely cheerful. The most accessible cinematic platformer on this list.
Not cinematic platformers — but worth knowing about
These two are not cinematic platformers — but if Gris is what brought you here, there is a real chance you will love them anyway.
Ori and the Blind Forest (2015)
A spirit creature navigating a dying forest in search of its lost guardian. One of the most emotionally affecting opening sequences in gaming — and a Metroidvania, not a cinematic platformer.
Why it feels like Gris: The hand-painted visual language, the wordless emotional opening, the sense of a world in grief — all directly adjacent to what Gris does.
What sets it apart: A full Metroidvania — nonlinear exploration, ability unlocking, demanding combat. More game than Gris in every sense. Worth every hour.
🛒 Buy Ori and the Blind Forest DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
Journey (2012)
A robed figure moves through a vast desert toward a distant mountain. No dialogue, no explanation, no map. Occasionally another player joins without warning and may or may not still be there when you reach the end.
Why it feels like Gris: The closest spiritual cousin to Gris that exists. Wordless emotional journey, beautiful visual language, a story told entirely through what you see and feel. Two hours long and genuinely life-changing for some players.
What sets it apart: 3D with free movement — not a cinematic platformer. And the anonymous co-op element is something neither Gris nor any other game on this list has.
🛒 Buy Journey DRM free on GOG · Check deals at Fanatical
FAQ
Neva — same studio, same painterly visual language, same emotional seriousness. If you want something more accessible and peaceful, Hoa is the closest in tone. If you want something equally wordless but darker, Inside is where to go next.
Yes — made by the same studio, Nomada, with the same painterly visual language and emotional seriousness. Neva is more action-focused and considerably more demanding than Gris, but the emotional DNA is unmistakably shared. The ending hits harder than almost anything in the genre.
Broadly yes — though it sits at the gentler, more accessible end of the genre. No fail states, minimal challenge, and a focus on atmosphere and emotional storytelling over puzzle design or trial-and-error gameplay. If you want the full definition and where Gris sits within it, our complete genre guide covers that in detail.
Neva if you want more from the same studio. Hoa if you want something equally peaceful. Inside if you want something darker and more challenging. Journey if you want the closest spiritual equivalent in 3D. Voyage if you want two hours of quiet with someone you care about.
Around two to three hours for a single playthrough. Short enough for a single evening — long enough to leave a mark.
Completely. Gris has no fail states — you cannot die, you cannot get stuck, and there is no challenge in the conventional sense. It is one of the best possible entry points into cinematic platformers for players who do not typically play games, or who want an experience rather than a challenge.
One Last Thing
Gris is the game I recommend most often to people who do not think they like games. It asks nothing of you except attention — and it rewards that attention with something genuinely moving. If you found your way here because it left a mark and you want more of that feeling, everything on this list was chosen with that specific feeling in mind.
The full database of cinematic platformers is right here — every game worth knowing about, from 1989 to today. And if Little Nightmares is also on your list, we have a full guide to games like Little Nightmares that covers similar territory from a darker angle.