A downloadable game

Buy Now$9.99 USD or more

In Gravity Express, you battle gravity while transporting cargo through abandoned mines.

Clients will demand speedy delivery, fuel economy, and won't be paying for your funeral. You better find your way fast while avoiding the rocky walls, magnets and cannons that spell your doom.

Features

  • A Playdate First: Full Motion Video cutscenes and level-previews
  • Explore 25 levels, with 3 challenges to complete for each level
  • 7 hazards; such as cannons, magnets and one-way gates
  • 5 pickups like keys, turbo and fuel
  • No loading screens, anywhere. @Guv_bubbs: "This... this feels snappy!"
  • Unique levels with their own characteristics: maze, speedway, zen, easy and hard
  • Fully customizable button mapping, physics and graphics styles. Want to turn gravity upside down? Go crazy!
  • Tilt your playdate to rotate the ship (enabled in settings)
  • Choose between crank, tilt and button inputs

Switch it up!

Gravity Express allows you to switch between crank, tilt and button control schemes during gameplay.
Together with re-assignable buttons - another Playdate first -, this leaves the choice of how you want to play the game firmly in your hands.

What others are saying about Gravity Express

Gravity Express feels splendid to play with its solid frame rate and smart controls. I see it living on my Playdate for a long time.
— @Guv_Bubbs, Playdate Squad
No doubt in my mind that this is the slickest Playdate game so far. Top tier production!
— Matt Septhon, Daily Driver
Definitely among the most fully-realized games on the Playdate.
Bravo!
— @Professir
This is great! I've beaten all the levels twice now on my playdate, and it is great fun. The easier levels are very meditative.
— @Karl Smith
Starting video was amazing. I cried like a ***** when I was watching it!

Incredibly cool.
— @fnc12
My most anticipated Playdate game, and it did not disappoint.
It looks and sounds amazing!
— @Rebecca
StatusReleased
Release date Jan 19, 2023
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(20 total ratings)
AuthorNino [Gravity Express]
GenrePlatformer, Action, Puzzle
TagsArcade, Gravity, Playdate, Sci-fi, Space
Average sessionA few minutes
AccessibilitySubtitles, Configurable controls

Purchase

Buy Now$9.99 USD or more

In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $9.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:

Gravity Express 1.3.1 13 MB

Development log

Comments

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(+1)

The game is absolutely stellar. Picked it from the Playdate Catalog and I had an absolute blast. Was totally obsessed until I've beaten it.

Glad to hear it!

The game requires some perseverance, but can also feel very natural when you get in the groove. Itā€™s all the more rewarding for it when you finish it.

For those that do, I bet you will love my upcoming game Wheelsprung (working title, probably this year). It uses a physics engine for all kinds of small puzzles. Itā€™s mostly inspired by Elasto Mania, Trials and a bit of Hillclimb. Follow me to find out about it once Iā€™ve got more to share!

(+1)

i picked this one up disastrously late for it having released a year ago, but i've gotta say that this is pretty much one of the must-buy titles on playdate. i'm only up to level 7-ish so far, but i know that this game's gonna keep me entertained for a while — the difficulty curve has already got me struggling, and i've already been coming back to the other levels in a pre-emptive attempt to grab all the achievements haha.

the controls are wicked precise and very fun to dial in; i die a lot but it's definitely more accurately-attributed to my own skill level as opposed to the game being unfair or poor to control. absolutely worth picking up if you're up to the challenge!

(2 edits)

Thanks for the praise!

Itā€™s good to know that there are extensive settings available, including an option to give yourself 90 lives, that will surely be enough šŸ˜‰. When you see the game over screen three times in a row, an option to skip the level is offered. But thatā€™ll surely be below your achievement-collecting standards, I think.

I also recommend trying crank, buttons and tilt controls for 20 minutes each.

For those who wander: press the menu button to bring up the map and find unexplored areas.

currently i've been trying out six lives, because i just HATE winning i guess LOL. i've been playing pretty much solely with the crank controls up to now but i'll be sure to give the others a shot — if the tilt controls are as good as in skew, then i'm on board haha

Hi there !
I love you game, it's really awsome.

But I encounter a crash several times after exploding my ship.
It happend in Level 11 only for the moment and I can't point a way to reproduce it 100%.

The error log is :

/lua/gameViewModel.lua:346: attempt to index a nil value (field '?')
stack traceback:
/lua/gameViewModel.lua:346: in function 'DecreaseLife'
/lua/game-explosion/GameExplosionScreen.lua:41: in method 'update'
/lua/playdate-navigator/Navigator.lua:109: in method 'updateActiveScreen'
main.lua:50: in function <main.lua:46>

Hope it'll help !

Hey there, glad youā€™re enjoying the game.

Thanks for the bug report, havenā€™t heard of this one before. I will look into it soon.

In the meantime I tried a bunch of crashing into obstacles in level 11 but (un)fortunately could not reproduce the problem, sorry!

If you have a more detailed description of how to trigger this issue or a video, feel free to reach out to me through email or discord and I can give it another go.

(1 edit) (-2)

Couldn't you lower the price a little?

Hey there,

This game is also available on catalog and to keep things simple itā€™s best to keep the base price the same. Playdate games donā€™t typically lower with price there when they are older. I think the game has enough quality and content to justify the price. Definetely a few hours of gameplay in there.

I am open to participating in bundles and sales on Itch.io though. I expect to participate in the Creatorā€™s Day sales this year. Be sure to press the follow button so you donā€™t miss these 1-day events. I can also create a blogpost so you are aware in advance.

First things first: This is an excellent game.
For people who like 'Star Sled' and 'Rocket Bytes', this is just bliss.
In short, it combines the cruisieness from the former with the preciseness from the latter. I do agree that the production value is high, but all things considered, there are still some points that I consider not ideal and feel like odd omissions from a game design/UI/UX point of view:

  • If you played the two games I just mentioned or similar ones, this game might feel rather easy. I don't really get the point of having the time and fuel challenge separated if their limit is so forgiving. I decided to set myself the challenge to only move on to the next level if I complete all three (speed, fuel and no extra lives) in one go, and that made it interesting again for me. But even then, there were only one or two instances where finishing it with only one live the first time did not also clear the time and fuel challenge requirements. Nonetheless, I think this would have been the better scoring system - getting 1 star, 2 stars or 3 start on a level depending on how many of the challenges you finish in one run. This would make it much more appealing for most people to come back to already completed levels.
  • One would assume that having so many settings would help to make the game more challenging if need be. But for some reason there is neither a setting to increase gravity/physics (even though I seem to remember that the dev-blog once mentioned "Jupiter" gravity?), nor the option to set 'lives' to 1. This is super annoying, I hate when games show of having many options, but then don't let you actually set stuff the way you like. Trying to do everything with only one life always forced me to restart the level via the menu instead of just letting me set the option lives, that is already there, to one… Why?!
  • There is a bug when starting the game which makes the level-select continuously scroll (until you press b, I found out later). Took me some time to be able to reproduce this consistently, but I think I figured it out now: When I press the throttle button several times in very quick succession on the start screen (as you often do when hovering in place) - doing that will lock that d-pad direction on the level select. Sounds trivial, but it happens to me like 1 out of 3 times...
  • Contrary to most list scrolling with crank on playdate work, level select does not use the crank scroll speed but absolute positions to trigger skipping to the next level selection. That cases a small bug, where, if you dock or undock your crank on a level you want to start, it will jump to the next or previous level (because it will jump 180 degrees in the process). Also, letting go of the crank very close to one of these set "jump" points, will sometimes make it jump a level again (if your crank continued on its own because it is a bit loose, for example). I get that level selection with crank is not the highest priority for this game, but it is noticeable for a game that seems so polished in other places.
  • It's not completely clear to me how much from this game is new and how much was taken from Grazy Gravity. I assume that pretty much all the coding was done from scratch, which no one wants to take away from you, but there is no point in coding something if there is no appealing idea, mechanics, and design. Therefore, I really don't like that it is nowhere mentioned in the description that this is 'heavily inspired by'/'based on'/'a spiritual successor of'/'made with permission of the creator of' or so, but without that suggests that this is a completely original IP.

Those were the points that annoy me a bit, but let me re-iterate that this is a great game overall that plays and feels great! The rest is just feedback for areas that could be improved from a UI/UX enthusiast's view point, but they don't bother me personally that much:

  • Personally, I like the start screen where you continue from by hovering over 'start' or 'settings', but it seems like some people have issues figuring out how to progress from here. Maybe it is because you sail past those platforms on the start screen, where some would expect and in the actual game do indeed land on them instead. Some small text like "hover your ship over 'start' or 'settings' to continue..." would perhaps help some here (might even showing up delayed after 10 seconds, if you want to keep the screen clean for regular users).
  • The keys look way too similar to be displayed that small, and distinguishing having or missing them by having them filled white or black. Not completely sure why they are displayed small instead of next to each other and only if they are collected or required (or at on black background for a more visible difference)…
  • The level map is a cute idea, but a bit of a waste if it can only be seen on the pause screen, where bigger maps are cut off anyway. So the few times when I wanted to check if the gate on the other end of the map is now accessible with the new key, I couldn't anyway until I was almost there anyway. I get that the map was a bonus and afterthought, but considering that it seems like some effort went into it, it is a bit sad that it can't just be mapped to a button (no control scheme seems to use all buttons anyway) for full screen display and ideally scrolling.
  • I don't really get the point of the heart power-ups if you can set the amount of lives to play with in the settings anyway… Except maybe for tricking me into thinking I maybe found something useful when playing a level the first time, which is kinda fun, I guess :D ).
  • I mentioned that I feel like the limits for the challenges are too generous. I feel like almost all of them should be AT LEAST 1/5 faster times. But Stage 10 is definitely completely off… Time attack asks for 450, and I apparently finished it in 88 just by attempting the survivor challenge…
  • I do feel there are A LOT of low-hanging fruits left unharvested content and replayability wise. I already mentioned using a three-start rating for finishing challenges in one go for additional challenge and replayability. The start video made me hope for a little more story telling engagement. I was a bit surprised that there was not at least some kind of text message or introduction text or other element related to that until the very end. Even if it would have been just some short sassy text by the instructor talking about some obstacles at the start of some levels or after some progress.  Some more diverse challenges or some collectibles, that maybe needed collecting in a specific order, would maybe have added an objective that could not have been cleared at the same time as all others in one go ā€“ for very easily added playtime/content/replayability. As you can tell, I really enjoy the core mechanic, so I am just looking for excuses to spend more time with the game. :)
  • Finally, I did not really get the 'mini-game' at the end. Why did I suddenly fly a completely different machine if I trained with the other? Why was it up to me to open the gate manually as a pilot? Why did it require such overly fast cranking? And then on the credits, I was steering my original ship again anyway, so it was not even some kind of proper reward/unlock…? (Was it supposed to be a reward for finishing the game with all achievements? I suppose there is no reward for that other than personal gratification?) I suppose I am overthinking it, and it was just to display how over-the-top, reckless and bothersome the company is, but I guess it didn't completely work for me. 

So TLDR:
Wonderful game that plays really well, all things considered I think it is worth the asking price. I consider the fact that it makes me want more, a good thing. Some small design choices that leave room for discussion if they should not have been tweaked differently. Interested to see if there will ever be some kind of expansions, considering the basis is that solid. Otherwise, interested to see what the dev puts out next.

I originally purchased this game on here. Is it possible to get a coupon for the Catalog version? I know they are more or less identical but it would be nice to be able to have automatic updates etc. I think the Catalog version has a map which mine does not.

(1 edit)

Hey there, Iā€™d like to help but unfortunately there is no way for developers to create catalog keys. I have not planned any updates tho, so if you use the latest from itch now, you should be set. The files are the same in both stores.

Catalog allows keys now

(+1)

This has quickly become my favourite game, a week into having my playdate. It's so fully featured and doesn't feel like it would be improved on a more capable console.

(1 edit) (+1)

Finally, or unfortunately, I have completed the game 100% (75/75 Achievements).

Something I would possibly improve is that you hide the checkpoint text, otherwise it's sometimes a bit difficult when you're in a field of fire.          

Here's what I mean : https://ibb.co/BcZPFRL

Otherwise, there is absolutely nothing to complain about, absolutely perfect in my humble opinion. :)

Wow, this is incredible. It might be a unique achievement. I myself have never seen the 75/75 score. I played all the levels a few times to set the achievement targets of course, but for the survivor challenge, that is not needed because the goal is always 0. Well done!

Very humbling that someone considers my game so enjoyable that they would 100% it. Iā€™m sorry I donā€™t have a special badge for this added to the game. I hope you enjoyed the endgame after level 25 at least (no spoilers, ;-)

If you want an additional challenge, set background color ā€œtrippyā€ in the settings and try to complete a few levels. But if you value your sanity, I wouldnā€™t recommend that.

Thank you so much for playing, and I hope you enjoy your Playdate a whole bunch more :-)

(3 edits) (+1)

Yes, I was secretly hoping for a special award. :)

Yeah, the outro was nice, but the Level was a little bit short and easy. (73 Sec) <edit> just improved to 54 Sec.  :D

Omg, trippy just gives me a headache.  :D

I hope more and more people discover how good the game is and support it, so hopefully we'll see a sequel. :) 

The community is still growing and I hope that there will be a few more quality games like this. 

(+1)

Super fun! The crank and gyro controls are super responsive, I'm excited to play through all the levels :)

Great stuff, keep on space truckinā€™!

Hi Nino,
I am hitting a bug where sometimes the controls will switch to e.g. the crank from button controls and I don't find a way to switch back to button controls afterward anymore. Any advice or legitimate bug?

Otherwise I *really* love this game, the controls are so fun when they work. ;) 
I was playing some kind of internet version of it in the end of 90s/early 2000s with friends a lot on perhaps Windows 98 or XP. If you have any idea what the game was, let me know, haha. Been looking for it recently again, Gravity Express has sure filled that gap amazingly though :) 

Hmm, havenā€™t heard of it before, unfortunately there is no option to ignore the crank when it is out.

If I had to guess, maybe your crank sensor is faulty?. You can test this with the Input Test app in the system settings. Leave the crank docked and then wiggle it a bit. See if it detects your crank to be undocked even when it is still collapsedā€¦

Another way might be to play using your computer. The game plays really well with the arrow keys in the simulator.

Iā€™m happy you are able to enjoy it at least!

Hi - I am still enthusiastic about the game and wonder if the update is worth it. Is there a changelog of the version numbers and is it possible to update without losing my progress of the game?

Hi there!

Updating to any version is fine, you wonā€™t lose progress.

Changelog is here: https://github.com/ninovanhooff/Crazy-Gravity-Playdate/releases

I consider the game complete and very stable, hope you enjoy šŸ˜Š

(+1)

Oh my goodness, you remade my favourite Atari ST game Grav and made it even better ā¤ļø This makes me want to buy a play date and buy this game!!

(+1)

Just completed this game and it has been my favorite game for the Playdate yet!  Please make a sequel and take more of my money!

(+2)

Excellent controls and gameplay.

I was concerned when I bought this that the game would be frustrating and difficult to control but I was very wrong.

The controls are incredibly precise and while some levels can be tough, the gameplay is very fair and offers a number of settings you can change if you do get stuck. 

The levels are just the right length to be a challenge but never too long that you get frustrated when you run out of lives.

The music and the presentation are excellent. 

Thank you for the high praise! Iā€™m glad you enjoyed it.

Which controls did you use? Tilt, crank or buttons?

(+2)

Crank to steer, B to move. I just finished it tonight. Love the "not" Final Countdown theme on the last level.

Unfortunately, the version I just bought keeps failing to download at 99%. Is this a known issues?

Hi there, thanks for buying the game!

Stuck at 99%, thatā€™s no funā€¦ First time I hear of it. I checked some forums, Discord and my e-mail. Doesnā€™t seems to be a known issue.

I re-enabled v1.1 of the game for download, which is known to work.

Iā€™ll send you an email so we can see what exactly the problem is.

(+1)

Re-starting the device did work for me. After the re-start the download went smooth. thank you!

(+2)

This is a winner. Excellent.

(+2)

I just beat the game. Loved it. Such a great take on the asteroids like game. Landing on platforms is so satisfying every time and some of the precision flying needed in the later levels really put me to the test without being overly frustrating. I only wish for more levels! Thanks!

(+3)

Thanks!

Part of the satisfaction may be that the landing sound is pretty nice in itself, and itā€™s volume depends on how hard you land. Did you notice?

(+1)

Would love to buy it if crank support will be finished and tested! 

(+1)

It IS finished and tested, and everything works perfectly fine šŸ˜‰

(+2)

Hey there, version 1.1 is now available, in which crank support is finalized. Very few issues were found since the initial release, which were also fixed.

You should be good to go šŸ˜€

(+2)

A brilliant game with even better music reminiscent of the amiga era. Highly recommended!

(+2)

Thank you for this great game!

I hope for many supporters so that we will see many more games from you for the Playdate.

Good Luck!

(+2)

Such a fantastic game! Easily my favorite game for the PlayDate so far! And the crank controls were super smooth and intuitive. After having completed the game, I'm looking forward to playing with different gravity settings.

(+2)

First Playdate game I purchased here and it's worth it! Dankjewel Nino!

(+1)

Bedankt makker! Are you Dutch?

Quite an honor! Glad you enjoyed it!

(+1)

Haha! nope! I just happen to have a lot of Dutch friends here in South of Spain!

(+2)

Fantastic game, very tight controls and feels as polished as any game with a similar scope I've played. Gravity and the ship's acceleration feel perfectly fine-tuned to feel ā€œnaturalā€. The full motion video is a bit gimmicky but is fun and adds extra onto what would've already been great game. Highly recommended, certainly worth the asking price.

Despite the crank controls currently being ā€œexperimentalā€ they're fantastic, far more precise and intuitive to use than D pad controls IMO.

(2 edits) (+1)

Hmm, one thing I've noticed is when you hit ā€œrestart levelā€ it seems to not fully reset the level (e.g. the auto-moving barriers) which makes it hard to quickly complete levels via muscle-memory. For instance on level 7, these screenshots are directly sequential runs, but the barriers are in completely different positions: Run 1 (freshly entered level)Run 2 (hit ā€œrestart levelā€ once)—note that I would've made it through the second time if the position had also reset; or perhaps the start position is the same but the sequence of movements is random every time which has the same result

(+2)

Can confirm.

However, since some rods move randomly anyways and the rodsā€™calculation is suspended when offscreen, it would not be very effective to reset the position on a level restart. So, this is mostly by design

(+1)

Yeah, I figured I was treating it a bit too much like Super Meat Boy, and Gravity Express isn't meant for speedrunning levels without pausing lol

(+2)

Crazy Gravity was one of my favorite games as a kid. Definitely excited to check this out.

(+1)

Yep, it stuck with me ever since.

You should definitely try the Classic setting for audio and graphics šŸ˜‰

(+3)

One of the best games on Playdate. Impressive presentation, satisfying gameplay, and perfect crank controls. Thereā€™s full motion video! I canā€™t recommend it enough.

(+2)

Thanks! Are you hunting for achievements or just enjoying the ride?

(+2)

I blasted through all the stages first, and now Iā€™m going back for achievements. Iā€™m already up to level 11. I canā€™t put it down.

(+2)

Guys! Definitely sideload the "beta" version. It's "experimental" just in the name, the crank works perfectly, not a hiccup whatsoever. 

Plus, you can always switch controls between controls (dpad/crank), so you can't go wrong! 

Nino is the best!

(2 edits) (+1)

Thank you! Yeah Iā€™m a perfectionist for sure.

The changes I still want to add to the 1.1 crank release are really minor:

  • When docking / undocking : show the button mapping for a few seconds in the HUD/UI
  • Replace placeholder listView scroll sound effects (aka level select bips and boops) by more sci-fi themed variants

So indeed, everyone can just go ahead and use the beta already :-)

(+2)

Just pulled the trigger! Installing now!

(+1)

Just bought at zero hour! Sideloading now!

(+1)

Very impressive. Nice work!

(+1)

Hey there! Thanks! I just noticed when scrolling through the sales reports that your comment is totally legit; you were the first one to buy Gravity Express. Thank you!

(+1)

Alright! I'm happy to support you. Pretty great game!

(+2)

Absolutely loved play testing this. Great game, it clearly shows the effort put into it, congrats on the release in advance!

(+2)

Beyond excited to play this! I lost a big portion of my childhood to ā€œLunar Rescueā€ on my old black-and-white Mac, and this looks like it share some DNA with that classic. Canā€™t wait!

(+2)

Super hyped!

(+5)

I WANT THIS! :-) 

(+2)

YOU WANT IT AND YOU WILL GET IT!

JANUARY 20TH

(+2)

YES I WILL HAVE IT SOON!!!

(+2)

DO YOU HAVE IT YET?

(+3)

YES! I HAVE IT AND LOVE IT!!! 

(+4)

canā€™t wait for this …. Looks amazing 

(+2)

So hyped!! Been following the devlog and can't wait for my PlayDate to arrive to play this :)

(+1)

Nice! Just a little while longer until the release @ January 20th :-)