how a tiny puzzle game changed me

underground fungi, forest roots deep. here’s a tiny troll, deep in her sleep.

this music is banging. time to write about juurru.

a screenshot of the game Juurru, showing a falling character and an ellipsis How do I start talking about Juurru? It’s a really small game that’s been so influential for me and has inspired me so much, and I want to tell you about how.

Juurru is a tiny puzzle game available on itch.io, made in 2023 by developer Kultisti and composer Solu. I really like it. I’m trying to write more about games, and Juurru seems like the right place to start somehow; I think it made me start believing I could make games again.

Juurru is a puzzle game, and honestly I usually don’t play puzzle games that much. This isn’t to say I think puzzle games are bad — puzzle games are really good! — but I love other types of games more. Weirdly though, a little while before I played Juurru I was making my own puzzle game. The theme for Global Game Jam 2023 was “roots,” and this gave me the idea of a puzzle platformer based on growing roots; this game became Uproot, and although it’s definitely flawed it was the first game I really felt proud of!

I had really struggled with the theme of roots and felt constrained while making Uproot, and by the end I only made 8 levels in total, some with unrelated ideas. I felt proud and unsure at the same time; I was happy that I could make everything work enough to finish a game, but the jam’s theme just made me feel lost. I moved on from Uproot, and a few months later I found Juurru.

Like Uproot, Juurru was made for the Global Game Jam and followed the theme of roots. But what was so striking to me was that Juurru seemed to innately understand the theme I had struggled with so much, and every part of the idea of roots seemed to fit naturally into its design. For example, every level involves moving between rooms separated by walls and floors; but when travelling as a root, these walls and floors become the environment you move through, and the rooms become inaccessible.

This felt so right. Here, the idea I thought was impossible to adapt became such a natural part of understanding Juurru’s world. The first room was a revelation, and every new room revealed new dimensions to the game’s heart. It felt like I was building an understanding of the game that was being played with, looked at in so many different ways; every puzzle is built from the same pieces but in such radically different ways, and playing as a root gave the game a beautifully unspoken story. I felt so lost and unsure while making Uproot, and here Juurru showed me how a designer could explore an idea in so many ways, from so many different perspectives; and to me this meant everything. I replayed Juurru while writing this and I still love it.

My friends had to play Juurru. They had to see the vision; and you do too! Juurru made me see the power of design, to see how much you can express when exploring the different dimensions of the same core idea. It might not be that game for you; a lot of my experience came from what I had done and how I felt before playing it. But I think that you should find the games that inspire you in that way, the ones that make you see everything you do differently.