#gravity bone

That's the secret agent's life - from tracking people across the galaxy, to taking pictures of birds?

Any feedback, suggestions, ideas for series I can do and etc. are always very much appreciated. =)

Probably one of the weirdest games in existence!?

Any feedback, suggestions, ideas for series I can do and etc. are always very much appreciated. =)

Gravity Bone

Playing Tiger Team made me want to go back and replay some other projects by  Blendo Games, so here's Gravity Bone.

I think this is my third time playing it; the first time was probably back in 2008 or 2009. It's a cool little game, that manages to evoke classic spy movies very quickly, and with an appealing style. I remember thinking that it could have been cool as a fleshed out, longer game.

Sometimes I’ll finish a game, mull it over, and realize that I don’t have nearly enough content or understanding of the game to justify a full length review. Yet, there are still some parts of the game that I want to talk about. For these tidbits, I have my Thoughts, posts like these where I can ramble about small things I like or dislike in a video game. Now then, enough of the introduction, let’s talk about Gravity Bone by Blendo Games, specifically the sliding door to the back room.

A bit of context to Gravity Bone, it was developed by Blendo Games, the one-man studio of Brendan Chung. Chung got his start making games by modding Quake and Halflife. Even from his early beginnings, his work has been characterized by an effort to subvert player expectations and conventional gameplay. This is something clearly carried over into Gravity Bones, where the player start the game as a covert spy infiltrating a high society social gathering.

The sliding door in question comes into play here. As the player runs around the party, the player might notice that the servers and waiters come through a single locked door on the level, one that only slides open when a waiter walks in or out of it. Early video games often used these locked doors as ways to spawn new NPCs into the game world in a seamless and natural way. As a child, I remember sitting in front of these doors (or garages that spawn NPCs in vehicles) hoping to get into these spaces before the door closed, in an effort to enter an area unintended by the developers. 

Brendan Chung however, not only accounts for this tendency in players, but builds on it. As a waiter waltzes out from the staff room, the player sneaks in and realize that the furnace room, the goal, is just around the corner. The player may quickly appreciates the beauty of the game’s design before moving on toward the goal. 

What I love about this segment is how the game is designed so that you, as a player, find yourself acting in the way a secret agent would. You sneak in through a briefly unlocked door hoping to get somewhere the developer didn’t intend for you in the same way a secret agent would sneak in through a locked door opened by a waiter to enter a prohibited area. Chung accounts for the player’s curiosity and rewards them with a rare sense of ludonarrative harmony as the player realizes its what they needed to do all along.