“Gravity Flip” is a simple maze navigation game that employs different tactics to thwart players from reaching the end easily. One of these tactics is the sprite speed as players input directional commands through the traditional keys W, A, S, D. While the speed initially looks manageable, players soon find out that the longer sprites move in a certain direction, the faster the sprite speed progressively becomes. This makes it difficult to navigate through the maze as touching the maze walls automatically makes players fail the level and sends them back to the beginning of the maze. There are no mechanics that make the game forgiving for players, but this makes players carefully time their moves to make sure to enter the different halls of the maze with precision. This is the main source of complexity within the game, but it must not be taken lightly as the narrow and short halls make it difficult to get a hang of the timing. There are no active enemies to further make navigating the maze difficult even though the direction to get through the maze is clear. Because of these factors, the game seems to be a game that predominantly relies on skill over thoughtfully planned strategy. However, this does not mean that strategy is not required. As players become more used to the game, they may realize that they can control the speed by constantly switching between controls to maintain the slow initial speed of the sprite to be able to make timing the navigation much easier. Rather than the traditional sense of strategizing within a game, strategizing in “Gravity Flip” requires players to work around the concrete rules of the movements to make different parts more forgiving for themselves. Slowing down the sprite piece and using the switched controls certainly made it easier to navigate through the pathways for me. Aside from the features mentioned above, the game seems to be completely against the player, and requires much concentration because of the timing aspects. As previously mentioned, the halls of the maze are tight and some parts are short, which makes it hard to navigate the maze when the sprite is moving fast. This is another major tactic that thwarts players from reaching the end easily. The walls are what make the players lose the level, so this use of space from the creator is what adds another layer of conflict. The organization of the walls also shapes the experience of the players because the tightness of the walls and space in contrast to the fast speed of the main sprite creates a feeling of being rushed. This initially made timing my moves difficult before getting used to the amalgamation of variables. To add difficulty, each increasing level seemed to make the lengths of the halls much shorter, and the walls extended unevenly to make players make moves last minute before crashing into the walls. Overall, “Gravity Flip” is a simple maze navigation game that uses different factors to enhance the difficulty of the game.
Gravity flip tests the player's timing at flipping the gravity of an alien creature in order to lead it into a goal. The main verb of this game is flipping gravity. The controls of the game are fairly simple and WASD are used in order to move the alien in the corresponding direction. What makes the game unique is how the platforms are not safe areas for the player to land on but are things to avoid. The gravity constantly accelerating the player leads to uncomfortably high speeds where careful timing is needed to make it through small entrances. This is unique from other puzzle games of simply having to navigate through hazards using movement. The movement in gravity flip is very distinct as the feeling of gravity is communicated to the player by the use of acceleration without any further input. However, changing the direction of gravity resets all momentum that the alien is under, which gives the alien the limitation of only being able to move in straight lines. The game’s 5 puzzles are set in increasing order of difficulty and require careful planning of what straight lines the player must take in order to reach the goal. Planning the straight lines is not enough on its own as the player can quickly lose control of how fast the alien is going and mess up the timing of a gravity flip. The player’s control over their own speed is also tested in order to not crash into the platforms. Another way of proceeding through levels is by using fast gravity flips in order to not gain too much speed in any direction. The “jittery” movement created by this is fairly slow and easy to control but must be used carefully as the designer has placed tight openings that jitter moving would crash you into. The 5th level especially punishes jittery movement and I feel like more levels would be a great addition to this game. I tried to avoid using the jittery movement and focused on improving the timing of my gravity flips. Proceeding to another level feels very satisfying as the puzzles are challenging. The gravity flips themselves felt slightly empty/unresponsive for the core mechanic of the game and maybe could have been accompanied by some sound effect or particle effects/animation to signify that a flip in gravity has occurred. It is a minor thing but I feel it could greatly improve the feel of navigating through a level. The main interplay in Gravity Flip is how the alien’s momentum is shifted and what new lines the alien can travel from each position it is in. The player is constantly engaged by the increasing difficulty of puzzles. The first levels are simple in order for the player to get accustomed to how fast the alien moves and the later levels test this skill. The game is a unique concept and I can see it being exceptionally addictive with more levels and more types of hazards.
Gravity Flip is a level-based puzzle style game where a player has to maneuver some sort of alien-frog character into hitting a portal, all under the constraints of gravity. This notion of gravity employed in the game comes in the form of the player’s movement increasing in speed once the player travels in any direction for a specific period of time. What I mean is that if you press “d” to travel right, you will travel right, and if you do not press another key within a certain amount of time, the speed of the alien-frog will severely bump up and go pretty fast (at least relative to the levels). Regarding the puzzles, these portals require a precise use of the movement to hit, all under the constraints of having the player move around barriers that if the player hits will reset the player. Moreover, the player cannot simply travel along the border of the screen since hitting the border of the screen will cause the player to reset the level as well. With this main verb of movement under the constraint of gravity comes some strategy in the rule that the gravity only severely increases the player’s speed after a specific period of time. What this means for the player is that they can strategically continue to press keys in order to change directions such that they move very slowly throughout the level since they are pressing these keys before the gravity essentially “kicks in.” Although this may seem simple, this does require some skill both due to the preciseness of the spamming of the directions in order to move slowly along with how narrow some of the paths are to hitting the portal. I found also that players can simply spam the key in the same direction that they want to move in which will also reset this timer before gravity can kick in; however, this is still not trivial as if you are not spamming the directional key consistently you will have gravity affect you and the alien-frog will speed up. Regarding the levels, the levels increase in difficulty as the player progresses through the game. Starting out with a very open level and leading up to a very narrow level not only requires the player to master the verb of gravitational movement before reaching latter levels, but it allows the player to ease into this mastery in the sense that the player can learn the movement under looser constraints and progress as they move through the levels. Overall, these five distinct levels implicitly teach the player how to control the player better, and are essentially “teaching” the player better use of the controls through progressively hardening the constraints. Beyond this, there is no story beyond the alien-frog having to move through levels along with the fact that this occurs in space. Thus, Gravity Flip is solely a level-based puzzle game that intends to allow players to solve the puzzle of hitting the portal under the constraints of gravity affecting movement.
Gravity-flip is a simple yet effective game that at its core is designed around timing. The game challenged the player to solve a series of levels, each with increasing difficulty. The player is square shaped monster that is in outer space. The monster is stationary at the beginning of each and every level. The player is able to control/move this squarely shaped monster by using directional keys on the keyboard. These keys can’t be combined and therefore there is 5 states that the monster can be in , moving left, right, up, down, or remaining stationary(only before the player has made any movement). It is important that there are only these 4 directions as the levels are planned out with very straight paths that move in the x and y-axis directions(2D). Mechanics of the game cause the monster to start moving and gaining speed once a direction is pressed, whether that be up, down, left, or right there is no way to totally stop the monster once it gets moving, though the player can rapidly spam different directions to slow the monster down. The goal of the game is to get the monster to the portal to transport to the next level. The challenge is that the monster can not touch any of the edges of the play space or the walls of the player space. The walls are designed through the levels to create an increasing level of difficulty. Notably, the speed of the monster increases as time goes on in a certain direction, so the longer you have the monster traveling in one direction the faster it will be going and therefore the less time you will have to react when you need to change the direction of the monster. The verb of the game is to move and really that is all the player can do is move(navigate) the play space to safely get the monster to the portal to advance to the next level. There are 5 distinct levels, each with their own setup of walls. Notably, the speed of the monster never changes through the levels. The speed always starts really slow when the player changes direction and then increases in velocity as time goes on until the monster hits a wall or edge and dies, hits a portal and makes it to the next level, or changes direcitons and slows its speed back down to the start speed. While the player can strategically switch between left/right up/down to stall the monster almost at a standstill, they can never really get the monster to stop moving without aggressively switching between different directions while avoiding touching anything. This strategy becomes much less effective in the tight, difficult spaces that level 5 presents to the player. I think this game has a ton of potential to be expanded with more levels. The base idea is great and opens up the ability to make a lot of challenging levels. Another way the difficulty could be modified is through the use of changing the speed/velocity of the monster depending upon the level. What could also be an interesting addition would be to limit the amount of time the player can change directions in order to remove the button spam approach to staying still.
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“Gravity Flip” is a simple maze navigation game that employs different tactics to thwart players from reaching the end easily. One of these tactics is the sprite speed as players input directional commands through the traditional keys W, A, S, D. While the speed initially looks manageable, players soon find out that the longer sprites move in a certain direction, the faster the sprite speed progressively becomes. This makes it difficult to navigate through the maze as touching the maze walls automatically makes players fail the level and sends them back to the beginning of the maze. There are no mechanics that make the game forgiving for players, but this makes players carefully time their moves to make sure to enter the different halls of the maze with precision. This is the main source of complexity within the game, but it must not be taken lightly as the narrow and short halls make it difficult to get a hang of the timing. There are no active enemies to further make navigating the maze difficult even though the direction to get through the maze is clear. Because of these factors, the game seems to be a game that predominantly relies on skill over thoughtfully planned strategy. However, this does not mean that strategy is not required. As players become more used to the game, they may realize that they can control the speed by constantly switching between controls to maintain the slow initial speed of the sprite to be able to make timing the navigation much easier. Rather than the traditional sense of strategizing within a game, strategizing in “Gravity Flip” requires players to work around the concrete rules of the movements to make different parts more forgiving for themselves. Slowing down the sprite piece and using the switched controls certainly made it easier to navigate through the pathways for me. Aside from the features mentioned above, the game seems to be completely against the player, and requires much concentration because of the timing aspects. As previously mentioned, the halls of the maze are tight and some parts are short, which makes it hard to navigate the maze when the sprite is moving fast. This is another major tactic that thwarts players from reaching the end easily. The walls are what make the players lose the level, so this use of space from the creator is what adds another layer of conflict. The organization of the walls also shapes the experience of the players because the tightness of the walls and space in contrast to the fast speed of the main sprite creates a feeling of being rushed. This initially made timing my moves difficult before getting used to the amalgamation of variables. To add difficulty, each increasing level seemed to make the lengths of the halls much shorter, and the walls extended unevenly to make players make moves last minute before crashing into the walls. Overall, “Gravity Flip” is a simple maze navigation game that uses different factors to enhance the difficulty of the game.
Gravity flip tests the player's timing at flipping the gravity of an alien creature in order to lead it into a goal. The main verb of this game is flipping gravity. The controls of the game are fairly simple and WASD are used in order to move the alien in the corresponding direction. What makes the game unique is how the platforms are not safe areas for the player to land on but are things to avoid. The gravity constantly accelerating the player leads to uncomfortably high speeds where careful timing is needed to make it through small entrances. This is unique from other puzzle games of simply having to navigate through hazards using movement. The movement in gravity flip is very distinct as the feeling of gravity is communicated to the player by the use of acceleration without any further input. However, changing the direction of gravity resets all momentum that the alien is under, which gives the alien the limitation of only being able to move in straight lines. The game’s 5 puzzles are set in increasing order of difficulty and require careful planning of what straight lines the player must take in order to reach the goal. Planning the straight lines is not enough on its own as the player can quickly lose control of how fast the alien is going and mess up the timing of a gravity flip. The player’s control over their own speed is also tested in order to not crash into the platforms. Another way of proceeding through levels is by using fast gravity flips in order to not gain too much speed in any direction. The “jittery” movement created by this is fairly slow and easy to control but must be used carefully as the designer has placed tight openings that jitter moving would crash you into. The 5th level especially punishes jittery movement and I feel like more levels would be a great addition to this game. I tried to avoid using the jittery movement and focused on improving the timing of my gravity flips. Proceeding to another level feels very satisfying as the puzzles are challenging. The gravity flips themselves felt slightly empty/unresponsive for the core mechanic of the game and maybe could have been accompanied by some sound effect or particle effects/animation to signify that a flip in gravity has occurred. It is a minor thing but I feel it could greatly improve the feel of navigating through a level. The main interplay in Gravity Flip is how the alien’s momentum is shifted and what new lines the alien can travel from each position it is in. The player is constantly engaged by the increasing difficulty of puzzles. The first levels are simple in order for the player to get accustomed to how fast the alien moves and the later levels test this skill. The game is a unique concept and I can see it being exceptionally addictive with more levels and more types of hazards.
Gravity Flip is a level-based puzzle style game where a player has to maneuver some sort of alien-frog character into hitting a portal, all under the constraints of gravity. This notion of gravity employed in the game comes in the form of the player’s movement increasing in speed once the player travels in any direction for a specific period of time. What I mean is that if you press “d” to travel right, you will travel right, and if you do not press another key within a certain amount of time, the speed of the alien-frog will severely bump up and go pretty fast (at least relative to the levels). Regarding the puzzles, these portals require a precise use of the movement to hit, all under the constraints of having the player move around barriers that if the player hits will reset the player. Moreover, the player cannot simply travel along the border of the screen since hitting the border of the screen will cause the player to reset the level as well. With this main verb of movement under the constraint of gravity comes some strategy in the rule that the gravity only severely increases the player’s speed after a specific period of time. What this means for the player is that they can strategically continue to press keys in order to change directions such that they move very slowly throughout the level since they are pressing these keys before the gravity essentially “kicks in.” Although this may seem simple, this does require some skill both due to the preciseness of the spamming of the directions in order to move slowly along with how narrow some of the paths are to hitting the portal. I found also that players can simply spam the key in the same direction that they want to move in which will also reset this timer before gravity can kick in; however, this is still not trivial as if you are not spamming the directional key consistently you will have gravity affect you and the alien-frog will speed up. Regarding the levels, the levels increase in difficulty as the player progresses through the game. Starting out with a very open level and leading up to a very narrow level not only requires the player to master the verb of gravitational movement before reaching latter levels, but it allows the player to ease into this mastery in the sense that the player can learn the movement under looser constraints and progress as they move through the levels. Overall, these five distinct levels implicitly teach the player how to control the player better, and are essentially “teaching” the player better use of the controls through progressively hardening the constraints. Beyond this, there is no story beyond the alien-frog having to move through levels along with the fact that this occurs in space. Thus, Gravity Flip is solely a level-based puzzle game that intends to allow players to solve the puzzle of hitting the portal under the constraints of gravity affecting movement.
Gravity-flip is a simple yet effective game that at its core is designed around timing. The game challenged the player to solve a series of levels, each with increasing difficulty. The player is square shaped monster that is in outer space. The monster is stationary at the beginning of each and every level. The player is able to control/move this squarely shaped monster by using directional keys on the keyboard. These keys can’t be combined and therefore there is 5 states that the monster can be in , moving left, right, up, down, or remaining stationary(only before the player has made any movement). It is important that there are only these 4 directions as the levels are planned out with very straight paths that move in the x and y-axis directions(2D). Mechanics of the game cause the monster to start moving and gaining speed once a direction is pressed, whether that be up, down, left, or right there is no way to totally stop the monster once it gets moving, though the player can rapidly spam different directions to slow the monster down. The goal of the game is to get the monster to the portal to transport to the next level. The challenge is that the monster can not touch any of the edges of the play space or the walls of the player space. The walls are designed through the levels to create an increasing level of difficulty. Notably, the speed of the monster increases as time goes on in a certain direction, so the longer you have the monster traveling in one direction the faster it will be going and therefore the less time you will have to react when you need to change the direction of the monster. The verb of the game is to move and really that is all the player can do is move(navigate) the play space to safely get the monster to the portal to advance to the next level. There are 5 distinct levels, each with their own setup of walls. Notably, the speed of the monster never changes through the levels. The speed always starts really slow when the player changes direction and then increases in velocity as time goes on until the monster hits a wall or edge and dies, hits a portal and makes it to the next level, or changes direcitons and slows its speed back down to the start speed. While the player can strategically switch between left/right up/down to stall the monster almost at a standstill, they can never really get the monster to stop moving without aggressively switching between different directions while avoiding touching anything. This strategy becomes much less effective in the tight, difficult spaces that level 5 presents to the player. I think this game has a ton of potential to be expanded with more levels. The base idea is great and opens up the ability to make a lot of challenging levels. Another way the difficulty could be modified is through the use of changing the speed/velocity of the monster depending upon the level. What could also be an interesting addition would be to limit the amount of time the player can change directions in order to remove the button spam approach to staying still.