Gravi Review

I think that puzzle games have advanced the most over the last few years. From simple games like Tetris to Portal, puzzle games have seen huge advancements. Sure shooters have gotten more advanced, but whole new forms of puzzle games have been created. Ones that incorporate physics and others that bend reality. Gravi is an example of a physics puzzle game, or more accurately a gravity puzzle game. Gravi was developed by Hashbang Games, and is the companies first game. I must admit, this is a heck of a first game.

The gameplay is centered around Gravi, a small blue ball that has the ability to shrink and create gravity fields. These two abilities are the main ways you control Gravi, besides basic movement. Both these abilities create a circular field where the effect is active that you can shoot to almost any location, if you get the trajectory right. So for example, if you shoot a gravity field onto a wall to your far right, if you enter it’s field of effect you will be pulled to its location. The puzzle aspect of the game is working out how to navigate the increasingly difficult labyrinths using these abilities, whilst dying the least. Initially the levels are very skilled based, but as the game progresses it becomes both skill and intelligence based. I was really impressed by how the game slowly introduced me to each new concept and made it easy to understand.  This is a sign of really good game design, and for a company’s first game  to be designed so well, is quite impressive. The game moves smoothly from the skill based gameplay of the first chapter to more puzzle like gameplay in the 2nd and beyond. The game gets really difficult and frustrating, but in a good way. Whenever I fell into spikes for the tenth time, instead of giving up and quitting, I just pushed forth until I succeeded. It was always super satisfying to beat the tough levels, and gave me a real sense of accomplishment. This difficulty balance is something that a lot of games tend to get wrong, so for Hashbangs first attempt to get this right is super impressive. The game had controller capabilities, so I was eager to try it out. However I discovered that the mouse and keyboard was easier to play with surprisingly, as opposed to the controller. Overall Gravi’s gameplay is very good and is a stellar example of a puzzle platformer.

Gravi is made on the Unity engine, and I could tell before I looked it up. Games made on this engine tend to look not quite as amazing as other games. the textures are a little low-res and the objects appear a bit blocky looking. This is very much a minor complaint, as it doesn’t fall really behind in comparison to other similar games, but I could see these flaws. The music in Gravi is outstanding. It suits the science fiction-esque tone that the game has by using a lot of synthesizer and techno sounds. I found myself grooving along to the music on more than one occasion.

There isn’t any real story to be found here in Gravi, but to be honest I don’t mind. It doesn’t particularly need a story, however some puzzle games like Portal were made infinitely better by the inclusion of an in-depth story. However this is a minor gripe that barely effected my overall experience with the game.

The lifespan of Gravi is quite good. There are 40 levels in all, and that will tide you over for ages, as the later levels are brutally difficult. However it suffers from the ‘puzzle game conundrum’ (a phrase that I’m coining right now) where once you’ve completed the game, there isn’t much fun to be had in replaying it as you know the puzzles solutions, Portal suffered from this also. This can’t be helped in linear puzzle game like this, but it means that you’ll play through Gravi once before leaving it alone.

Gravi is available on Steam as an early access title  for PC and will soon be also available for Mac and Linux.