Release Date: August 23, 2019

Developer and Publisher: Galaxy Shark Studios

Genre: First Person Puzzle Platforming Game

Gravitas is a really well done indie game with a lot of character. As you play through the “Gallery of Refined Gravity” you quickly learn the general controls to manipulate gravity. In this way, you can move through the rooms in which the goal is to get from one side to the other without dying. Each room presents new and unique challenges with every level revealing more about where you are and what is actually going on. The only gameplay complaint I had was the lack of an actual tutorial. Figuring out the controls took a bit of trial and error sometimes, but most of what you needed to know was worked into the narrative dialogue, which I thought was well done.

This game was really well done considering that, as far as I could tell, this is the only game Galaxy Shark Studios has ever done. The graphics are top notch, and the voice acting was excellent, even though I came to the conclusion that the developers may have voiced the two characters themselves. If this is the case they did a much better job than most self voiced titles I’ve played. The dialogue was consistently funny throughout the game and I found myself chuckling every now and then. The one complaint I had was at the very beginning. Your character starts the game looking out the window of their spacecraft. As this was the beginning of the game, I thought this was a cutscene, so I stood there staring out the window for a solid minute before I realized I could move and I should leave. 

~spoilers in this section~

This game is very short, which is why this review is as well, but the developers still managed to fit a storyline into the game. You first arrive in the Gallery of Refined Gravity and are greeted by the AI voice of SHI. Quickly thereafter you meet the person who invited you here to be their student: The Curator. Through the banter of the two characters you workout that the Gallery is in danger of being destroyed. At this point the game becomes more about solving the puzzles to get to safety rather than solving them to view the Curator’s gravity art. Eventually you get back to your ship just before the Gallery is blown to bits. The fact that a game this short can pull of a story arch that makes you feel a sense of urgency is really impressive.

Overall there was very little I could critique about this game. It was really well executed and I enjoyed every minute of it. The one thing I wanted from it was more. I hope the developers take the overwhelmingly positive response to this game and make it bigger and better. This is a diamond in the rough. And I give Gravitas the highest rank yet with a: