When booting up a game and hearing those couple of notes, and seeing the splash screen, it’s hard not to cringe. GameSalad. There’s so many reasons people usually don’t like games done with GameSalad, lots of long loading screens, unresponsive controls, frame-rate issues, lag, poor collision detection, weird physics. Every once in a while there would be a game that ran decently, and was good enough to put up with all the loading screens, and it’s happening more often now that GameSalad has undergone a pretty heafty update. Games made with the “new” GameSalad, while still suffering from lots of loading screens, don’t take as long to load, have pretty decent controls, and don’t generally have any bad frame-rate issues. Thankfully, Monster Robot Studios new game, GravCat, is made with the new GameSalad engine. The collision detection is still a little funky, and the physics can take a little getting use to, but really, it’s one of the few GameSalad games we’ve enjoyed lately.
You’ll control a cat with some pretty nifty gear in space. The trick is, he falls in whatever direction the wheels on the bottom of his gear are facing. It’s kind of a plat former, but mainly a physics based action arcade game. To progress through the game, you’ll need to guide the cat around each of the levels, collecting all 10 of the green gems scattered throughout. There are enemies that you can land on, but only with your wheels, along with other hazards, like mines, mini-suns, rocks with orbs trapped in them, spinning fan-like blades, water, and more, including bosses, and some power-ups to help you deal with everything.
The controls take a little getting use to, and can either be two arrows, one in each bottom corner of the screen, the left one rotating your cat counter-clockwise, while the right rotates him clockwise, and when pressed together, flip your cat 180 degrees, along with two arrows at the top corners that change the direction your cat is facing, left or right, which influences the path you “fall“ along, and when pressed at the same time launch your cat, which lets you break through certain blocks, and get the orbs that are trapped inside some rocks, as well as get through water faster, and more nifty little mechanics. There’s also a tractor beam button in the upper left corner that will pick up or drag some of the objects in the game. There’s also tilt controls.
The graphics are done surprisingly well, and everything is pretty vibrant, considering it’s done with GS. The physics, like the controls, take a bit of getting use to, and the animations are done pretty well. The enemies do sometimes look a little funky walking around, and the animation for destroying them is kind of weird, but, I hate to keep saying this, considering it’s done with GameSalad, I’m pretty impressed. The collision detection, like most GameSalad made games, does need quite a bit of work. There’s countless times I’ve bounced off of air surrounding a block, and then gone back to the same block and ended up actually colliding with it before bouncing off, and some spots that needed pinpoint precision to get through two rocks that were kind of close together, but that I should have obviously been able to easily fit through, because of the “bouncy air” surrounding those rocks. The collision detection did get to be pretty frustrating.
In the end, GravCat is a decent enough game. The fact that it’s made with GameSalad can sometimes be surprising, but at other times, will make you say “figures”. There are quite a bit of mid-level loading screens telling you what certain objects can do, or how to deal with those objects, which really does take away from the flow of the gameplay. A tutorial level or two might have been a better idea than having mid-level loading to get to an info screen, though I can kind of understand why it wasn’t done in tutorial levels, as there’s quite a bit of different game mechanics, and seeing everything right off the bat would have made the first couple levels pretty boring, but a middle ground, like tutorial levels every 5 levels or something could help with the whole flow of the game. Being $0.99, and having 40+ levels, with more content on the way, and some pretty interesting gameplay makes it worth checking out if you’re into arcade type physics based anti-gravity action games. It does lack online support, and with no leader boards, there’s no real reason to replay levels. Once you’re done with the game, chances are you’ll either delete it, or keep it somewhere on your device with other games that are waiting for content updates. I guess what I’m getting at is that if you can put up with the loading screens, and are willing to get use to a games controls and physics, and don’t mind not having replay value, GravCat is a game worth checking out. It’s clear that Monster Robot Studios is talented and willing to put time and effort into their games, but I can’t stop wondering what they could do if using Unity or Corona, and I hope we get the chance to find out.
In the end, GravCat is a decent enough game. The fact that it’s made with GameSalad can sometimes be surprising, but at other times, will make you say “figures”. There are quite a bit of mid-level loading screens telling you what certain objects can do, or how to deal with those objects, which really does take away from the flow of the gameplay. A tutorial level or two might have been a better idea than having mid-level loading to get to an info screen, though I can kind of understand why it wasn’t done in tutorial levels, as there’s quite a bit of different game mechanics, and seeing everything right off the bat would have made the first couple levels pretty boring, but a middle ground, like tutorial levels every 5 levels or something could help with the whole flow of the game. Being $0.99, and having 40+ levels, with more content on the way, and some pretty interesting gameplay makes it worth checking out if you’re into arcade type physics based anti-gravity action games. It does lack online support, and with no leader boards, there’s no real reason to replay levels. Once you’re done with the game, chances are you’ll either delete it, or keep it somewhere on your device with other games that are waiting for content updates. I guess what I’m getting at is that if you can put up with the loading screens, and are willing to get use to a games controls and physics, and don’t mind not having replay value, GravCat is a game worth checking out. It’s clear that Monster Robot Studios is talented and willing to put time and effort into their games, but I can’t stop wondering what they could do if using Unity or Corona, and I hope we get the chance to find out.
GravCat gets a score of 6 out of 10.
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