Reviewed on PC

Gravity Ghost is one of the oddest and most relaxing space adventures Ive ever embarked upon. While its view of the cosmos is grounded in science you learn plenty about slingshot trajectories and astro-geometry its really brought to life by a vibrant sense of spirituality. Physics and mysticism combine in an experience thats both funny and sad, eccentric and poignant, soothing and frequently baffling. Even though the challenge remains slight throughout and it never really makes the most of its most promising mechanics, I found Gravity Ghost a delightful curiosity throughout.

Before heading through the space gate, where things get surreal very quickly, a little context is useful. You play as a young girl who has died in an unspecified incident and been reincarnated among the stars. The visuals have a charming roughness to them you can see individual, textured brushstrokes and when combined with the simple, cartoon character design and its joyful use of colour, it feels like playing a game illustrated by a child. Is this the dead girl coming to terms with what has happened to her? I think thats the intention, and I found it strangely moving. Yes, Gravity Ghost initially seems a bit silly, but crucially its never flippant; it never loses sight of its underlying narrative about how this girl died.

Her moving story is pieced together by journeying from planet to planet, solving simple but novel physics-based puzzles, and illuminating constellations. No matter where you are in the cosmos the challenge is always the same: you must collect a tiny star located somewhere in the level, usually orbiting another planet to unlock a door which leads to the next system. This is complicated by the intrusion of gravity, which makes leaping from planetoid to planetoid manageable, but less than straightforward.

Just like in Mario Galaxy, when youre close to a sizeable chunk of mass, youre drawn towards it and can land on its surface. But thats where the similarities end, as Gravity Ghost expects you to take more daring leaps into the black stuff. It's much less daunting than it sounds because of the lack of a "death" situation, and I felt encouraged to experiment with the invisible forces, determined by the layout of orbiting bodies in a given level, push and pull you around the screen. Youre not entirely at the mercy of gravity, however; you can resist and sometimes even break away from the gravity of a nearby planet, and drift freely in space until snared by another rock.

But even as I solved puzzle after puzzle, I never felt like I truly understood how best to exploit this invisible force and turn it to my advantage. Collecting space debris makes the girls hair grow which I assume is supposed to function as some kind of aid, giving form to the invisible forces at work and while it was useful to see the trajectory I had been on, I found it next to useless when plotting my next course.

Special abilities are soon introduced to give you more control while drifting through space, and they do make getting around a bit easier. By the end, youre able to hover briefly in the air, adopt a super-dense form, and dash left or right all of which allow you to deviate from a set orbit. The pacing of these abilities is well-judged, too, with each one being introduced once Id was comfortable with the last. Yet no matter how many abilities I gained, I never got rid of the feeling that I was wrestling with gravity. Maybe thats how its supposed to feel, like its this great force that can never be truly tamed, but it also felt like I was never really improving, either. Right until the end, I found trial-and-error and patience were just as valuable as my newfound abilities.

What's strange is that Gravity Ghosts lays groundwork for more complexity and different types of puzzles, yet never capitalizes on it. For instance, you can cycle through different unlockable outfits to transform planets into lush jungle worlds, balls of unset lava, or a number of things in between, each with their own gravitational properties.. Initially, I assumed it was going to be how you tame gravity, so I began experimenting, creating fire planets, which make you jump a little higher, and crystal planets, which are superdense and warp the fabric of space around them and slow you down. But I soon realised it didnt really matter. Barring a few exceptions, most levels can be solved without any terraforming whatsoever. Its a shame, since its presented as a substantial mechanic, and is used to uncover more about the girls past, but in terms of the individual level design it feels oddly inessential.

That said, it rarely hindered my enjoyment, since this is the kind of puzzle where the idea of challenge seems incidental; its much more concerned with wrapping a sad tale in a distinctive, weirdly pleasurable sensory experience. In short, Gravity Ghost wants you to enjoy the act of feeding lettuce to a giant space rabbit, rather than make that into a challenge.

And when it comes to mood, Gravity Ghost truly excels. The music is superb, with piano and synth working in tandem to create a score that is both stirring and emotive; the art is vibrant and stimulating, yet its soft and friendly style prevent it from ever feeling garish. The voice acting is downright bizarre, too, with the delivery ranging from what sounds like archive recordings to the kind of intense bounciness you would expect from Saturday-morning cartoons. It feels like an episode of Adventure Times rerouted through the final act of 2001: A Space Odyssey; one minute youre learning about optics from a giant owl while fixing a lighthouse next to a black hole, the next youre uncovering more of about its buried, earth-bound story about this girl and her tragic death. Its amusing and odd, but also stark and poignant.

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Gravity Ghost