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Review

Back down to earth

by Craig Grannell (October 14th, 2010 at 11:23 am)

Game: Gravity Runner. Publisher: We Are Colin. Price: 59p. Buy the game

Game: Hello, I’m Gravity Runner, a fresh new spin on the automatic-running genre!

It's Rick Runnerous!

Reviewer: Oooh! I like those games, especially the excellent Run!, so what do you bring to the party?

Game: Proper courses, so you have fixed challenges. Lots of variation in level design. New features that are gradually introduced throughout. And then there’s the gravity-flipping mechanic, which enables you to run on the ceiling!

Reviewer: Sounds great! I take it you don’t screw everything up with a few entirely avoidable bone-headed mistakes?

Game: Er…

Reviewer: I mean, just imagine if you made the gravity-switch control really sensitive, making it far too easy to trigger on levels were precision jumping is needed. That’d be really stupid, especially if you don’t provide alternate control methods from ‘tap to switch gravity while in the air’, such as a distinct on-screen ‘button’ for making the switch.

Game: Ha ha! Yes, that would be really stupid. (Shit.)

Reviewer: And just think how annoying you would be if instead of exciting Mario-style leaping, you instead increasingly made levels like utterly hateful Rick Dangerous-style memory tests, forcing players to remember lengthy fixed sequences. I mean, that’d suck most of the fun out of proceedings!

Game: Yes. Yes, it would. (Bugger.)

Reviewer: To be fair, the end result wouldn’t be a complete disaster. In fact, it’d still be quite fun at times and probably better than Canabalt. But it’d be a massive missed opportunity to create something that’s among the best in its genre. You’d instead end up with a somewhat playable but ultimately hugely frustrating experience that you wouldn’t return to once you’d completed maybe 20 levels.

Game: *SHOOTS SELF*

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