Climbing was always a common verb on platformers, mostly as a goal or a challenge to be conquered. In the modern world, however, climbing became more of a system in itself. You approach a steep mountain and a small, green circle appears at the side of your character and starts decreasing: now you are on a resource management minigame. "You can climb everything...", they say, just before showing that you will need to think every meter to not fall and die.

That said, Gecko Gods tells "you can climb everything" with a period at the end. A small period on the format of a cute, small gecko that can actually climb everything. On the quest of awakening old reptile gods, you just look at any surface and go to it, probably pressing the Run button to go faster. Our little gecko can attach even to the ceiling, or dash through small gaps to keep going.

And it's weirdly satisfying to do so! Because climbing is so easy, the game becomes less of a puzzle on how to get somewhere, but a constant quest for exploration: "What's behind this pillar?" and you just go because you can. This freedom is intentional, and the game also has a lot of collectables to find, like colored insects, hidden relics and runes that you can use to change the color and pattern of your gecko skin.

What's on Gecko Gods besides a great climbing mechanic and a cute protagonist? Unfortunately, not much. Although you play on an archipelago with different themed islands, they are look mostly the same with light brown rocks and old ruins, what makes it even harder to localize yourself in the map sometimes. You can encounter some cool setpieces, like an isle focused on boat navigating, but it's hard to not look into the huge world in front of you as a big stone blob.

Gameplay-wise, I don't think it had found many ways of using your gecko powers and it repeats itself really fast. You have some specific puzzle types - like 8-piece sliding puzzles and magnetic ball pushing - but it seems the game was stretched to be bigger than necessary. Even the dash is "re-used" as a battle system of sorts that isn't deep enough to be interesting and becomes just a minute of button mashing. Even the good climbing gameplay became a little bit boring after hours of exploring the same environments over and over.

At the end of the day, Gecko Gods is a really cool game that goes against the flow to give climbing on videogames a new and interesting meaning, but I would not ask you to force it to the end if you think you've already had enough fun. Find the collectibles you want, color your gecko as much you like, and no wall will be a real obstacle if you know your tail enough. But the gods of those islands can wait for you to keep back to the game one day, it's fine.