Gravity Runner

Genre: 3D Platformer

Players: 1

.

Review:

Gravity Runner is a 3D Platformer released in 2021 on PC and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2022. In this game, players take the role of an astronaut in a red suit transported to a strange realm where he must run from an expanding black hole by jumping on floating 80s-style neon gridline platforms, occasionally touching a translucent floating cone to reverse gravity, and touching warp gates to jump to new areas.

Probably the best part of this game is the presentation, which does a good job presenting a striking visual landscape with its 80s-inspired geometric shapes, and even has some nice space-warping effects near the black hole that can get pretty trippy. This is all backed by a retro-style synthesized soundtrack that is also very 80s.

While this game nails the presentation, it fails abysmally with pretty much everything else. The Platforming in this game feels abysmal, with players not getting very high off the ground when they jump, and with momentum being far too strong. The lack of a solid, stationary ground makes it difficult to see where you are in relation to platforms, your shadow being an extremely faint and hard-to-see purple circle makes it harder, and the inability to change the camera makes it yet even harder than that.

players can snag videotapes for a temporary double-jump, but by “temporary”, I mean that this ability will leave you suddenly and with little warning, meaning you could start a jump that you need a double-jump to complete, only to find it suddenly removed before you can use it. Even worse, you can start a jump to get a videotape knowing that you’ll need the double-jump to complete the jump, only to find the double-jump doesn’t register until it’s too late and you’ve already missed the platform you were jumping to.

Making things even worse is that when you miss a platform, the platforms you’ve already interacted with remain affected by the game’s physics, often rendering them unusable when you try again. This can make the level literally impossible to complete, forcing you to wait for the black hole to reach you and kill you. Oh, and when you do die, be ready for a frustratingly long loading time.

I can’t help but think that all of the development of Gravity Runner went toward its aesthetic and floaty physics, and none of it went to playtesting the actual gameplay, because even though this game looks great, it is absolutely awful to play. Don’t buy it.

tl;dr – Gravity Runner is a 3D Platformer where players control an astronaut jumping from platform to platform to escape an expanding black hole. The game’s 80s-inspired aesthetic looks great, but the gameplay itself is absolutely terrible, suffering from numerous issues that make this torturous to play. Don’t let your money get sucked up into this black hole.

Grade: D

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