Gravity Ghost: Deluxe Edition is a puzzle game with a lot of heart. Its gravity-based levels will tug on your on-screen character as it tries to do the same to your emotions. It’s not a perfect package, but it’s really good for the short time it’s there.
You play as a little girl named Iona. She wakes up in the afterlife with no memory of how she got there. She only knows she is searching for her friend, Voy, a fox she knew when she was alive. You’ll spend the rest of the game searching and trying to uncover her story as well.
To accomplish those goals, you’ll need to grab the star in every level, and a new group of levels can be unlocked once you meet the star requirement. Each level will have different objects that exert a certain amount of pull on Iona with size dictating the amount of force. Later objects will be more dense and pull more or even push you.
Using those forces to her advantage, Iona can jump and soar around to reach a star high above or below her. Many of the levels can be completed very quickly, and, although it becomes more difficult over time, many are not very hard. Gravity Ghost is more about the journey than punishing the player at every turn.
That’s not to say the levels are bad. They were really fun and didn’t overstay their welcome. They’re designed to drip feed that excitement to you as you push through level after level as they introduce more concepts and challenges. Each one is well-designed, and the thirteen, new challenge levels are going to really push you.
Some of the regular levels are impossible to beat without the new abilities you can gain through geoms collected by using your own gravity to move them through a maze. These give Iona more control and mobility with a dash, double jump, glide, or becoming very heavy.
The terraforming abilities help you to change objects transforming their amount of pull and free otherwise locked stars. For example, they allow to change an ice planet to a water planet. This allows you to swim into it and collect the star. You can create a fiery world that repels you to get to a higher place.
Your hair allows you to make these terraforming transitions by moving around the object. Some of your hair is used up by the process, but you can lengthen it again by collecting items in the levels. It’s also how you carry puzzle pieces and animal spirits between levels.
The animal spirits must be chased, caught, and reunited with their skeletons. This unlocks a new bit of story and helps Iona to remember. Although it’s not long, the story is good, and I wanted to unlock each piece.
Once you complete the game, you can restart it with Voy. The fox is a new playable character for consoles, and it changes the feel considerably. Jumping is much stronger than Iona, but you can move her more easily in motion. It’s going to make some puzzles easy and harder, so there is some replayability.
The general visuals and audio are good. You’ll hear the same musical tracks repeated a little too often, but they’re solid tracks that sound great. The visuals have a slightly pixelated appearance with a crayon coloring effect. There is not a lot of movement, but they do a great job to communicate the story and emotions.
The only complaint here is that the voice acting can be off a little. Most range from fine to very good, including the work by Ashly Burch, but Eddy, the elderly woman, sounds muffled and off somehow. It may not bother you, but I didn’t care for it.
With a new playable character, Voy, new challenge levels, great level design, and a good story, Gravity Ghost: Deluxe Edition is easy to recommend. It won’t last more than a few hours, but it’s well worth it to take Iona’s journey.
Gravity Ghost Deluxe Edition PS4 Review
-
Overall - Fantastic - 8/108/10
Summary
Gravity Ghost: Deluxe Edition is both short and sweet. In a few hours, you can run through Iona’s emotional story, and I really enjoyed my time with it. The visual style and sound are nice, even if I didn’t enjoy some of voice acting. If you want a basic puzzler with some interesting mechanics and good story, this one shouldn’t be missed.
Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.
Reviewed using PS4 Pro.
