Gravi

I have a bit of a bone to pick with video games that rely on ball physics. For various reasons the act of rolling a spherical object around in a digital world almost always proves extremely frustrating to me, as there is a fine line between overt realism and cartoon looseness that is often stepped over one way or the other to make for an unsatisfying experience. Gravi personifies the bulk of my gripes with this style of game, a hodgepodge of bad design decisions, uninspired art and music, and soulless level design. Gravi functions around a core mechanic: creating temporary gravity fields which suck you toward them, by which you make your way around the levels, flipping switches, avoiding traps, and getting to the end pipe. Actually creating these fields is not nearly as intuitive as it should be however, and the controls leave a great deal on the table with regards to movement and precision (whether using a controller or keyboard and mouse). Your ball is either rolling sluggishly or far too fast and shooting gravity fields is almost trial and error like with how quickly and erratically you have to place them to survive. This is worsened by the almost instant difficulty spike which only grows higher with each passing level. Checkpoints are placed annoyingly far apart, certain switches are timed which calls for even faster movement than usual (and yet there is no distinction between timed and normal switches), and the developers even try to work in multiplane levels (ala LittleBigPlanet) which more often than not winds up breaking and glitching you into spikes or other hazards (I also experienced at least one glitch that put me inside a piece of the environment). Some will defend these problems because the game is listed as being "Early Access", but with how long it has been available elsewhere without a beta or otherwise incomplete label, I find it rather inexcusable and just inherent to the poor design. I played about halfway through the game before deciding to quit, and was bored well before I reached that point. The art direction is so bland and the music so generic, that the whole experience feels lifeless and disconnected. Even had the gameplay been better (or even good, which I would certainly not consider it) nothing about the way it plays or is presented is at all compelling and although I didn't expect a to actually become attached or care about a little glowing ball, I found it impossible to become even somewhat interested in anything the game offered. Gravi is derivative, at times almost broken, and just not fun. Despite my prejudice against ball physics and games that utilize them, I feel I gave it more than a fair chance to prove me wrong, and yet all it did was further affirm my original thoughts while disappointing me all the same with its own form of mediocrity.

Avoid this game! Gravi is not really early access. The developers haven't updated any content in the game for more than a year and are entirely absent in the forums. It feels like they have given up on this game entirely. Several things are broken in the game. 3 of the first 10 stages would not mark themselves as completed after I finished them, even after completing them several times each. Almost every level has serious bugs where you get stuck or get killed by nothing. You will need to replay most levels several times because of the bugs. The volume control menu doesn't work and the game volume randomly changes while you play. The shrink power really doesn't respond most of the time. I dread when a level requires me to use the shrink power because I know I'll have to replay the level many times. Playing this game felt like a chore. I cannot think of any redeeming factors, especially considering the developers abandoned the game before it was even completed.

After reading bad reviews i decided to take a closer look at this game. now after less than two hours and 40%+ complete i must say it's time to say a few words about the game. Game works well technically. It has not crashed yet and game pad works just fine. Game character rolls around very loosely but i dont see that as a bug. i think it's designed this way to force the player to balance your gravi all the time near edges. See those curved slopes with spikes at either the top and maybe a flame at the bottom? Coincidence for sure. Menus look goofy with their cartoonish looks but i dont see any more need to spill more ink about that. They work and thats it. Not much backstory. Who or what is this anti-gravi seen in the pics? Biggest problem i see with this game is that it has painted itself into a game genre niche corner of a sorts: the only people i can recommend this are people who have beaten Super Meat Boy and are looking for a challenge. If you are new to this genre then this game is not a very good starting point. Not as polished as SMB and not as fun as Escape Goat. It is pointless to bash this game for what it represents. it is quite simple with limited content, maschocistic as hell and you need good pain tolerance and good nerves to proceed in the levels. But so are the much better known SMB and others. I had some fun with this - but now i must probably rest as the game pad will probably be smashed into the wall soon next to the pulp formerly known as Meat Boy. I'll give this a careful thumbs up since the game is just fine and the buyer really needs to understand that this game is not casual in any way. It is just as hardcore as it's predecessors in the genre. Game is also often found in bundles and sales so it's unlikely that you will pay too much for this. edit: collectable count stopped working after awhile so there really is no point going forward until they fix this. After all this IS a game where you progress and try to achieve hard to get items/achievements.

Playing this game I did not realize it was early access, I ran into a couple bugs where I got stuck in the walls and that was about it for bugs (this game either does not have a suicide key or it is not listed in the controls) It took me a little over 2 hours to beat the current 40 levels. Most of these levels posed some form of a challenge and I enjoyed them all. One part I found odd is the lack of presence of Anti-Gravi though I suppose we will see more of him once the game is complete. I honestly would recommend this game, even if the devs did no more work on it and called it complete as is. A nice challenging platformer.

I remember hype dev made around this game, actions on some websites etc. So I have my own copy of Gravi, got that probably for free or from some really cheap bundle long time ago. It's early access game, so there must be bugs, some stuff to fix etc. Around the end of 2013 it landed on Steam. We have now 2016 and it looks like this game is abandoned. As a game it's very decent - interesting idea made rather poor. But, what kind of game it is, what it can offer, how fun it is - that doesn't matter. It's early access scam and nothing more. Why work on game when players will buy unfinished products and DLCs for those (not in that case but still). I can't recommend that kind of game to anyone.

This game is just awful. I played through the first 20 levels in about 30 minutes before I couldn't take any more. And I'm a completionist who hates leaving games unfinished. First off, the in-game graphics are bad, it's hard to see what things are, or which way the blue and red streams are flowing (it's not always the same way) The controls are terrible and very floaty. The acceleration of your Gravi is already very tempermental (moving one platform at a time to avoid spikes is nearly impossible, and the fact that it changes a lot more (read: becomes worse) when you shoot your matter out, makes attempting complex series of moves in a time limit (like after hitting a switch) terribly frustrating. The menu screens are also poorly designed. I understand you want to keep the mechanical aesthetic, but when I can't figure out where the buttons are to change screens or close something, you have a usability problem. And the whole trailer shows of an Anti-Gravi? At what point does that show up? Is there a story? Why am I moving this guy around these ridiculous trap-laden areas. Thankfully I got this with a bundle of other games. But I wouldn't recommend spending any time on it even if it were free.

This is an abandoned early access 3D rendered 2D platformer/physics puzzle game where you control a rolling blob, but you can also shoot a little thing that can propel you in one direction if you want. The game advertises 4K but it just upscales the low resolution assets, so that's a fail. The controls don't work, while you are insulted with console peasant childrens toy controller prompts, it does imply the keyboard can be used, but for me the KB controls didn't work, only the mouse. This renders the game unplayable. The icing on this shovelware is the way the devs left it in early access, but sold it in bundles as a complete game, to scam as much money from people as they could from this mess. What a joke, avoid this one. If you want fun puzzle platforming, try Portal.

ATTENTION! GAME IS ABANDONED! DO NOT BUY IT AT ANY PRICE! This is another "Early access" project which was abandoned by the developers long time ago. Despite the fact it can be played but the bugs and broken achievements (which developers promised to fix - YEAH, RIGHT) ruined it! They just don't care about customers anymore and don't even respond on the Steam discussion forums. UPD. 22 nov 2021 The developer is back and promises to fix the game. We'll see.

I really wanted to like this game, and even accounting for it being "Early Access", but I keep finding myself irritated and wanting to play anything else. To begin with, the idea sounds awesome. Roll around, fire out your little gravity bender, get pulled to it. You can "resist" the pull, and use that to your advantage. However, where this whole mechanism falls apart is in both the control scheme and the implementation. Your projectile also has to follow the standard parabolic path any first year physics student would be familiar with. Trying to accurately aim this parabolic projectile with the mouse, while also controlling Gravi with your keyboard, seems to be entirely an exercise in frustration. If this is where the developers were getting the "puzzle" part of "Puzzle platformer", I think they should revisit what that means. There weren't times where I was trying to find my own path through a level, or trying to figure out which switch to pull when. They levels were incredibly linear, and the only puzzles I could find were the mechanics. For instance, there are areas near the end of chapter 1 that require you to "swing" from the ceiling, while avoiding the fire jets above, and the spikes below. This turned into pure frustration for me- minor changes to the angle of my projectile caused it to miss the ceiling pillars entirely, or catch the side instead of the bottom and pull me into the flames. When I could successfully hit the first pillar, transitioning to the next one seemed to be "how fast can you slightly adjust the mouse and fire again so that the projectile hits the pillar before you fall to the spikes below", not "can you make a good plan through this gauntlet". Super Meat Boy was fun because of the precision required and how exact the control felt. Gravi is not, because it requires similar levels of precision but has controls that feel much less exact. Perhaps it would be better with a controller, but I feel that the problem is not solely to blame on the control system, but instead lies in the combination of cramped quarters and need to exact responses with pixel-perfect precision. Control issues aside, the levels looked rather blah. Graphically they are detailed enough to have some character, but the limited palette leads to some visual confusion at times. It also felt at times like the detail of the background fights with the important information about dangers in the level itself. The audio wasn't bad, but wasn't great, either. I would consider the sound and music to be a wash, all told. Overall, I cannot recommend this. There are better platformers out there, and I didn't really find the "puzzle" aspect to this.

game is in EA for 6 years ... hmmm....