Notgames Forum

(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/09/jan/gravitybone1.jpg)
(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/09/jan/gravitybone2.jpg)
http://www.blendogames.com/

anyone ever play this? It's hard to go into much detail without ruining the ending, but I found it to be a very worthwhile diversion.

I played this a while ago. But -as usual- I didn't make it to the ending because I couldn't figure out what to do and was to lazy to find a walkthrough.

I really liked Gravitybone. Together with Flotilla and his site it shows Blendo Games' unique mindset, it is very inspiring to me for its unique character.

The scene in the second screenshot above is absolutely brilliant. It is almost 1st person comedy action.

Being reminded of it makes me a little itchy for doing a comedy game at some point :)

Also have to say I like this game. Too bad it was never made into a full game (as in a longer game, right now it is very short and does not feel like full experience).

I think that's almost my favorite part -- it does its thing very well, very briefly, and then leaves you wanting more. It's a nice change of pace in the age of games that take a whole weekend (or more) to complete.

also, Michaël -- where did you get stuck? I found it to be a charmingly self-explanatory game right up until the flagpole jumping bit (which IMO was a questionable design decision, and one which I noclip-ed through without a twinge of guilt).

That might have been where I got stuck. I don't remember.

The flagpoles were where growing up with Rayman 2 helped. :)

If you like the style of this be sure to try Flotilla as well. I liked that as a strategy game and spent a lot of worthwhile hours on it!

EDIT: Though Flotilla is evidently 'just for fun'.

I love Gravity Bone, but I too got stuck on the flagpole jump. I mean, you can't grab things in that game, and there's no way that I could jump across a chasm and land on a flagpole without falling over... right?

I used a walkthrough, which exposed me to some further spoilers, sadly.

However, I did eventually come across this intriguing critique of the game, that I think you all would enjoy reading:
http://zachjulius.blogspot.com/2009/01/gravity-bones-of-first-person-shooter.html

Thanks for sharing this.

My opinion is that the ambiance and some details are very interesting, but the gameplay seems to be all about finding cards or other objects to unlock doors, jumping on things, falling and restart again until we don't die. A FPS without murders but with quite the same meaningless mechanics. Like Michaël, i haven't enough patience anymore to die and retry until i reach the exit door.

Did you read the critique I linked to?

My impression was that the game is a parody of first-person shooters, and that's why it does those things.

I doubt that the author really intended the game to be viewed like this. So while it is nice that one can get this out of the game, I am quite sure this was not the intention of its maker.

For me personally, I cannot remember being annoyed with any of the mechanics while playing.

Thanks Axcho,
Actually i didn't read the critique you linked to.
Here is a piece of it:


I didn't undertand that! Maybe i should restart the game and try to reach the end to have a better view of it.

Okay so i have played it up to its end.

Thus it is full of non-sense in order to emphasize the non-sense of FPS or action games or even hollywood movies ^^ Like birds that explode when we take a picture of them, or the furnace room which seems to be at the center of the world, or the hero who never really dies, or some absurd cut scenes or flash backs. It's funny ^^

All of this make this game an elitist game, because the author only speaks to people who have a specific video game culture. Maybe the next step is to avoid the things showed by this game + try to create meaningful things + speak to a wide audience.

Thanks for the reflection, and this game is interesting anyway.

I see no similarity between Gravity Bone and Flotilla.

@ghostwheel,

Their sense of style and humour is in some ways quite similar. Flotilla (in a binary story moment) gives you the problem of yeti's in your ship's engine room and one of the solutions offered is to 'defang' them. After which, the story tells you, 'they grow quiet and resentful.'

It is just little touches like that which give it a similar atmosphere to Gravity Bone.