Jason Roberts interview: Creating Gorogoa required awkwardness and chaos

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
July 5, 2018
Updated June 19, 2025
8 min

You could say that Gorogoa, an artistic puzzle game mostly created by a single developer over five years, had the perfect outcome because it was “in between a success and a hit,” according to creator Jason Roberts.

It was a very unique game that made you feel like you were interacting with beautiful hand-drawn paintings. Working on his first game, Roberts taught himself game development. And he created all of the paintings and most of the game on his own, except for the sound and music.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.