The impartial reality of childhood promises tragedy is treated with same innocence as prosperity. We’re better equipped to learn from mistakes than act on advice, a phase of humanity Gravity Ghost both indulges and exposes to its own limitations. Expressed as a product, Gravity Ghost is an inventive platformer with a precarious and affecting narrative. Absorbed as an experience, Gravity Ghost makes a better case for the union of interactivity and storytelling.
It’s helpful to first understand Gravity Ghost as a game. Those who played Super Mario Galaxy (and to a much lesser extent, Sonic Adventure 2), will have a leg-up on negotiating its driving force; platforming with regard to the pull of gravity. The protagonist, Iona, must leap from planet to planet while accounting for each sphere’s implicit gravity. As expected, larger bodies express a greater and more powerful sense of gravity than their smaller counterparts.
So, Gravity Ghost is a 2D platformer with a warm regard for natural physics. It’s easy to say but somewhat more enjoyable to experience. If you jump and hold a directional button in a constant direction, Iona will default to a natural, elliptical orbit around the nearest planet. It’s also fun to play with the distance between planets and test the magnetic nature of their respective boundaries, enshrining Gravity Ghost’s central mechanic with a natural, pun intended, attraction.
Gravity Ghost delivers the same mission inside all 94 of its levels; collect the star, and make it to the exit. Early on this is simply a test of properly negotiating the gravity between different sizes and shapes of planets. Level by level, Gravity Ghost starts to pepper in additional challenges; planets that bump the player around like a pinball, super-dense planets with more powerful gravity, planets that need to be repeatedly circumnavigated like a wind-up clock, and a sun that needs to be circled around to brighten the universe and reveal a star. Unlocking upgrades tasks the player with essentially moving a marble through a maze, but it’s more of a pallet-cleanser than a facet of the game.
Gravity Ghost is a fairly easy game, and that’s not taking into account all the tiny powers/cheats unlocked along the way. You eventually get the option to ground-pound, for lack of a better term, down toward the nearest center of gravity and, much later, the ability to render any object in your way completely transparent (and essentially eliminating the need for a terraforming mechanic earned and employed earlier on). About the only thing that’ll give players fits is the occasional timing-based challenge, tasking the player with eclipsing a number of objects in a precious amount of time. It’s not hard as much as it just requires an amount of patience and skill Gravity Ghost rarely demands, but it may lead to a few brief instances of frustration.
An occasional dalliance in animal rescue may also consume a portion of Gravity Ghost. Levels, aligned in segregated collections on an all-encompassing world map, occasionally make room for a paw print or a skeleton. Paw prints are where Iona can find and collect an animal’s ghost, and taking that ghost to the similarly-labeled skeleton planet reunites the spirit with its earthly body and (presumably) allows it to cross over. The player is not only rewarded with a tender scene between Iona and the animal, but also non-linear injections of the backstory fueling Gravity Ghost’s corresponding plot.
Gravity Ghost treats its narrative with playfulness and sincerity. Technically, there’s nothing funny about a young girl, Iona, dying in some sort of vague tragedy. The way in which Gravity Ghost chooses to relate this information, on the other hand, is the source of its trustful relationship with its protagonist. The events leading to Iona’s demise were laced with tragedy. From the death of her parents and her relationship with her older sister, Hickory, nothing seemed easy and ideas of responsibility were always in question.
The only thing Iona appeared to take solace in was her relationship with a friendly fox. The secluded, island setting of Gravity Ghost allows for certain leaps of faith when dealing with a direct narrative, so much that the idea of a young girl befriending a natural predator might kill suspension of disbelief, but Gravity Ghost pulls it off explicitly because of the age of its protagonist. When you’re a kid, everything is magic. At that time, most life experiences are also first experiences and it’s not a feeling we come to terms with anymore as adults. I think Gravity Ghost really nails this sort of sentimentality, even and especially if it’s ultimately expressed in the most tragic of outcomes.
Iona’s lack preparation to deal with the gravity around her may be Gravity Ghost’s thesis. As a game it’s literally making sense of overlapping gravitational pulls, and as a narrative it’s picking up different pieces and assembling them all at the end of the line. The revelation toward Gravity Ghost’s conclusion packs an emotional punch as hard as any of its peers, and does so without resorting to a contrived Shyamalan-twist just for the sake of it. It’s the story the game wanted to tell all along, but not without properly equipping the player on the way there.
What’s kind of tough to get around, and a facet of Gravity Ghost I’m still not entirely comfortable with, is the writing and voice performances. Iona, in her apparent first moments as a ghost, nonchalantly greats an animal friend with, “Welcome to the afterlife, here is your hug!” Similar comments are delivered to every other animal when they’re rescued. As flippant and seemingly obtuse as that sounds, it’s actually faultless for the character Gravity Ghost trying to flesh out. Iona’s relative youth doesn’t exactly grant her a proper understanding of the magnitude of death, and this is how she’s handling her newfound duties.
It’s also so unnerving because of the deathly serious nature of the remainder Gravity Ghost’s narrative. Every other soul on the island seems lost without Iona’s presence. Mending those relationships serves as Gravity Ghost’s b-story, but it’s equally important to the development of Iona as a character. In Iona’s case, the weight of the world needs to be assumed and collected before it can be realized.
All of Gravity Ghost is absorbed through modest, but highly effective, visual presentation. It’s a simple 2D game outfitted with bursts of color and outrageous visual context. I would have preferred a bit more variation between the levels than brief adjustments to respective elemental properties, which is something I probably wouldn’t have realized had Gravity Ghost not gone way off the map with its beautiful final series of levels. Vocal performances sometimes lack the pacing and timing heard in from more competent actors, which sometimes leaves Gravity Ghost sounding more like a melodramatic M83 song than a proper story. Not up for debate is the strength of Ben Pruty’s soundtrack, which finds catchy and appreciable melodies supporting every new series of levels. Inseparable from the game to which it’s attached, it fits right in line with soundtracks to Fez and Hohokum.
Seen to its conclusion, Gravity Ghost’s gameplay isn’t likely to leave an impression nearly as strong as its presentation. Days later, the former is already starting to leave me, whereas the latter constantly remains on my mind. Why that is can’t be effectively relayed with a synopsis, but rather must be taken in with Gravity Ghost’s combination of visual storytelling, music, and youthful parlance. With that in mind, perceived limitations are wiped clean by Gravity Ghost’s lingering disposition.
