Gentoo Rescue

You know, I always love it when a game features meta puzzles, it’s always a special moment when you realize a game is deeper than it seems. They’re usually the culmination point and always convey special emotions to me, which is why I also love writing about them.

For those who don’t know what a meta puzzle is, it’s a puzzle that isn’t self-contained. It takes full advantage of the hubs and requires the use of elements from other puzzles, usually by finding how to smuggle specific items. Well, Recursed managed to create self-contained meta puzzles with a classic level selection but that’s another topic.

When you launch Gentoo Rescue, you spawn in a basic movement tutorial puzzle, which you exit to reach the tutorial world once completed. The tutorial world itself is a puzzle you can complete once you’ve solved all the tutorial puzzles on the way. Exiting the tutorial world leads to the main world that is also a big puzzle with several sub-worlds, like the tutorial one. This very unconventional structure reminded me of Baba is You’s endgame… but, while Baba is You mainly used it to create a “neverending” feeling, Gentoo Rescue completely embraces it from the start. Though at this point I couldn’t officially tell the game would mostly be about meta puzzles, this structure and the many levels completely out of reach were largely enough to tell my brain would soon be on fire.

But let’s put the meta aspect aside for a moment, let’s talk about the gameplay and the core of the game. Gentoo Rescue has you control a certain number of either penguins or walruses of four different colors each, you can switch to any of the available animals at any time. Their only movement is to slide until they hit an obstacle, which is funny because that’s the exact same gameplay as the previous game I had played, namely Only Sliding. What’s even funnier is that, despite their identical gameplay, they are actually quite the opposites from a design standpoint. Only Sliding is a collection of extremely basic but challenging puzzles that keep the rules as simple as possible, while Gentoo Rescue is FULL of mechanics and special interactions that twist the rules in every way possible.

So what’s the difference between a penguin and a walrus? It lies in the goal of the puzzles, walruses will always need to eventually be brought into water (that is to say brought out of the puzzles), while penguins need to be brought on their corresponding colored circle. The animals need to precisely help and block each other until all requirements are met, the puzzle is then solved and you’re free.

Because once you reach a puzzle, the animal is caged and cannot move until you’ve solved it. This is to maintain a certain order in which you have to solve the puzzles as they act as progressive “tutorials”, and to prevent you from solving the big sub-world puzzles straight away. That leads us to one of the biggest strengths of the game: the quality of life features. I cannot count how many clever games were ruined and turned into a slog by the lack of important features to render everything smooth. Gentoo Rescue is incredibly well thought-out, it’s insane. Everything is there, you can rebind the controls (even on the mouse wheel or mouse buttons, which I always use when available), there is a journal to keep track of all the special rules you discover, you can undo but also redo, you can instantly exit or warp to any reached puzzle… the game even stores your current progression in a puzzle when you quit the game. Your current puzzle becomes the menu screen, it’s a minor thing but I really loved that.

What makes Gentoo Rescue so fun to play is the items. They can be attached to any animal and all have special properties and interactions. The spring makes you bounce one cell from a wall for example… but what would happen if the cell in question is already taken? Well, I’ll let you figure out! The game keeps a gentle approach and progressively teaches you all these subtleties, each sub-sub-world (yes, sub-sub-world) is based around an item.

The base puzzles – or the sub-sub-sub-worlds (oh god), the layer in which there is no puzzle in your puzzle if you prefer – are all very small, but extremely well designed. It’s a bit weird, but the best description I could make of them would be “hardcore tutorials”. They are not designed to have a lot going on, but you’ll still regularly struggle on them because of how precise they can get. What’s sure is that Jagriff, the developer of Gentoo Rescue, was really, really inspired; the creativity is through the roof, and so is the pure fun I felt throughout the game. And the last time I said that in a review was for… Baba is You. Yup, I’d bet anything that Baba was definitely a huge inspiration, and Jagriff completely understood what made that game so perfect. And while I don’t think Gentoo Rescue’s puzzles are better than Baba’s ones, the game still has something up his sleeve that, I dare say, ultimately propels it amongst the very best puzzle games.

So let’s go back to our meta puzzle discussion! It’s a bit of a spoiler though as I’m gonna detail how the meta shenanigans work, even though that’s something you get a glimpse of relatively early into the game.

The meta aspect is where Gentoo Rescue shines the most. It was heaven to me and, as expected, the difficulty skyrockets compared to the normal puzzles.

Some puzzles, mainly the sub-worlds, spawn a rainbow spiral once completed; if you then bring an animal on it, you can export it to the previous layer along with its item, transforming the animal that was standing on the level. And that’s not all! If a puzzle features a red penguin for example, you can import an item by entering the puzzle with a red penguin carrying an item. Each time you successfully import or export an item, it will be permanently saved and selectable for the concerned worlds whenever you want.

You can probably imagine how crazy it can get. Exports will lead to more potential imports which can in turn unlock new exports… and yeah, that’s exactly how you eventually end up reaching those previously out-of-reach puzzles. They themselves are usually not very hard but showcase special extreme interactions in a fun way, which I think is the perfect reward after a challenging meta puzzle.

Aaaaand no, that’s not all. I can’t exactly tell when they showed up, but when you’re far enough into the game, special challenges also appear in some puzzles. Every puzzle has the default challenge “don’t import an item”, which just means you need to solve every base puzzle normally. But these special challenges task you to complete the puzzles with restrictions, such as completing them in one move or to not move a certain penguin. They are of course strictly impossible without importing an item, which means you need to figure out which one you need and how to import it. Reaching isolated puzzles was already very hard sometimes, but some of these challenges are just straight up brutal.

Aaaaand no, that’s still not all. There are also two hidden achievements if you still want more. Just reveal them once you’ve completed the game and you’ll know what to do, they can be seen as special challenges at a greater scale.

Total mastery of the game’s mechanics is required if you want to fully complete everything, it just goes to show how skillfully designed Gentoo Rescue is. Absolutely every subtlety of the mechanics is taught to you through very clever but approachable puzzles, and then you’re dropped into the meta madness where your ingenuity and understanding of the game are put to their limits.

Aaaaand yes, this time that’s all! Gentoo Rescue is a gem. And I truly mean it, I can’t even find a single little flaw. Congrats to Jagriff, I really hope his creative mind will grace us with another immaculate piece of meta heaven someday.

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Developer: Jagriff
Publisher: Jagriff
Platform: Steam – Windows/Linux
Release Date: May 22, 2025