Gravitation

Gravitation isn't a direct sequel to Passage so much as a side-story. It carefully fleshes out the universe that the games take place in, much like Shadow of the Colossus did for Ico. You can see the effects that killing the end boss in Passage has had on the world and things are dire. The sun is dying... It's fading out and leaving the world in a state of dull, lifeless gray.

Our hero in this story takes the obvious course of action: play catch with a girl until your head sets on fire which allows you to fly and collect stars which turn into blocks that can be pushed into a furnace. Unfortunately, Jason Rohrer leans heavily on block pushing puzzles and collectathon mechanics akin to Banjo Kazooie, and I felt that perhaps after Passage he would strike at a more unique genre. As Derek Yu would say, "LET'S GET IT AWN: The bingo that is! I'm Derek Yu. Buy the award-winning action-adventure 'Aquaria' for $19.99!"



The Rundown:

* No Gameplay: Slightly more than Passage and slightly less than Knytt; Gravitation exists in gameplay purgatory along with good-hearted atheist games who did not accept Jon Blow as their lord and savior.

* Silly Title: I spent years thinking this was a sequel to Lunar Lander.

* Indie Trendy: In an innovative move, Rohrer breaks the mold by following his own indy trend.

* Lo-fi: If this game were any more "lo-fi" it would be a low quality speaker, because the term "low fidelity" has nothing to do with games when you think about it.

* Abstract Graphics: It might be a stretch since Passage didn't get a mark here. Everything's so low resolution that the line between abstract and actual art starts to blur.

* No Instructions: Are you an indie enough dude to figure out the abstract goal of an art game? Probably.

* Experimental: The experiment was to replace gameplay with metaphor and see if any of the test subjects noticed.

* Counter-Intuitive: I don't like describing both this one and "no instructions" in the same post, so if, in the future, you indie game developers could include one or the other I would appreciate it.

* 15 Minutes or Less: This one can describe both my attention span for playing this game, or its actual length. The latter is just a guess, obviously.