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[Gravitaria]

Gravitaria
Development blog for an Indie game about cutesy cubes who must survive in ruthless zero gravity worlds.

Pre-Alpha Build: http://tequilaware.com/DemoBuilds/index.html

WebM Gameplay sample: http://gravitaria.tumblr.com/post/91404859037/this-is-gravitarian-an-indie-game-about-cutesy

This is Gravitaria

Gravitaria is an indie game about cutesy cubes who must survive in ruthless zero gravity locations. The player assumes control of Fi, a happy-go-lucky cube, whom he must guide to find and retrieve every collectable through the stages.  Through an intuitive gravity/inertia based mechanic, Gravitaria offers a fun challenge for puzzle loving fans, while providing pretty visuals and an immersive story.

Gravitaria is being worked on by four people, myself included, each of us with an specific task (Pretty much a designer/dev/artist, a marketing/business/design, a secodn dev/designer and a composer).
Gravitaria is meant to be a challenging game set in a cute, and at timesdreamy atmosphere. We want people to have a blast of fun while playing this, we want this game for them to be a memorable experience.
This blog will be used for regular updates regarding the game’s progress,lore bits and assorted ramblings here and there, in short, an experience to get the word out on our game and keep ourselves motivated, Thank you!

Additional Screenshots

A catapult like propulsion system...


Crafted for intuitive movement with realistic physics!


Welcome to Starfield...


Welcome to Molten Rock!


Plot

Peaceful days in the planet Cubia come to an end when the Gravitarian, an ancient artifact said to be of extreme importance to the world is accidentally destroyed, resulting in Cubia’s mass decreasing and its gravity weakening. Fragments  of the shattered Gravitarian trigger widespread chaos across the world.

The ultimate fate of Cubia comes to rest with an unlikely hero…

Characters
Fi

The protagonist of Gravitaria. A playful cubian who through coincidence becomes the only Cubian capable of moving around the near zero gravity world.
Fi must shake off his doubt and recover all the fragments of the Gravitarian, embracing everything this task entails.

Nu

Fi's best friend.The culprit behind all the chaos. Nu attempted to steal the Gravitarian to help his village recover from a recent catastrophe,However, under his care the artifact shatters and his opportunity is lost. Fearing punishment from his kin and frustration over his failure, Nu runs away.

General Information
Target Platforms:Windows/Linux/Macosx
Mode:Single-player
Control Type:Touch/Mouse Based

In future updates we will reveal more about the game, such as the types of enemies and obstacles you can expect, the critical bits of lore behind it and more.
As the state of the game progresses, we will update here and of course, in our twitter account.

https://twitter.com/yourtequilaware
http://tequilaware.tumblr.com/

We appreciate any ounce of support, thank you guys!

[ucupumar]

It looks very nice. 

I think maybe you should post animated gif or video about how zero gravity mechanic really works.

[Gravitaria]

It looks very nice. 

I think maybe you should post animated gif or video about how zero gravity mechanic really works.

Thank you for your input!
I left a link in the original post with a capture of the gameplay in webm format, but i'll add more gifs eventually, As to what I mean by zero gravity, it basically acts the same way as when an astronaut throws something in a weightless flight, that is to say, the object thrown will keep moving continuously in the same direction until it comes into contact with another force, giving it a new direction and speed.

In practice it allows for the player to throw the character around to collect stuff in a really fun way.

[Gravitaria]

Of course the project is not dead, But much has changed since the initial post!
You can now play a pre-alpha build of our game, right now we are looking for feedback on what is working for the player and what is not, so please share your thoughts with us if you play this!

http://tequilaware.com/DemoBuilds/index.html

We are aware of a couple of glitches, like the catapult's guideline not aligning correctly and some UI alignment problems, but right now we are focused on seeing how gameplay feels for as many people as we can ask.

The first post has been updated with all the relevant info 

[illugion]

  The game feels really good. I like how the character attracts the golden things so when something is left behind I know it's because I didnt calculate well enough

  It gets really hard ( for me ) on a certain level, with green walls, spinning stuff and things like that haha it was hard to point and click on the character ( or his path ) when i was on high speeds. I kept clicking somewhere else on the screen hoping the character would get my commands haha
I could get through some walls by pulling the character to them, I think thats not intentional 

  Overall this is really cool and the character is really cute, i like it !

[Gravitaria]

Thanks for the input!
Yeah magnetism is there to keep things fun and the player focused on the obstacles ahead 

Yeah right now we are conflicted as to where to cap Fi's speed Some people like it that fast, others want to slow it down!

Getting through walls is actually an intended mechanic, meant for using shortcuts across the level and make it less frustrating when the player dies at later points of the level, however we haven't looked into a way to incorporate it as a learnable mechanic in-game yet(Not to mention making it look less choppy and for it to feel more natural, suggestions are welcome!) 

Again, thanks for your feedback!

[ucupumar]

I've completed the pre-alpha demo. It's fun game so far. 

Maybe it's intended, but I feel this game kinda lacks of punishments. The game didn't really restart (you don't have to collect collectables again after died) and you have unlimited lives. Maybe you could do something about it.

[Gravitaria]

Thank you for trying out the pre-alpha!

Yes, right now the lack of punishment is intended as we don't want it to get too frustrating for the player on that aspect, we want to focus the frustrating element in difficult obstacles later on!

However completing levels without dying will become a key aspect of the game later on, encouraging the player to try again later once he's familiar with the stage, this time withotu dying  

Right now we are focusing our efforts into debugging some of the drag mechanics when the player is near walls and danger zones, we can't really delve further into anything else until we have flawless core mechanics

Again, thank you for keeping up with our progress, it is very much appreciated  

[Gravitaria]

Gravitaria is undergoing major changes right now!
One of them is a complete make-over of all the existing assets:




The others involve fixing our pre-alpha demo engine and incorporating a couple of changes dictated by the feedback we got!
We also got ourselves a tumblr so stop by and say hi please!
http://tequilaware.tumblr.com/

[Andy Rhetoric]

Just tried out the build you have up.

I ended up bailing out earlier than I think I should have. Suddenly having to navigate around the green blocks that kill you surprised me. I hadn't had to use a ton of precise shots yet to that point and felt like I wasn't prepared to get around with the skill required yet.

I think a major factor in my frustrations is the small threshold that the player has before the speed of the character increases. I think it would feel better if you had to drag further to get the higher speeds, which could give some more room for pulling off lighter shots without squinting to see how big the shot line is.

I liked that I played, I can't wait to see what changes/improvements you're making. It's a neat concept for sure.

Good luck!

[Sebioff]

Are collisions based on the rectanglular shape of the character? I had some cases where he'd bounce off walls in weird unexpected angles which was frustrating...especially since his rotation is pretty unpredictable/uncontrollable. Part of the problem might be however that for some reason I tried to clear levels with a minimum amount of shots (so it seemed extra unfair that I'd not end up in the location I carefully planned) - although there's nothing encouraging to play like this it took me a while to realize that maybe I'm doing it wrong.
There are also some cases where it's impossible to tell what's foreground and what's background.

Apart from that I liked what I've seen. Good luck

[Gravitaria]

@Andy
We actually think the same regarding the speed! We will make it more gradual, even with the more powerful flings, hopefully this improvement to the core mechanic of the game will show in the next demo, thanks for playing and commenting! 

@Sebioff
We are actually looking to make the game reward a minimum amount of shots to complete a level, so fixing the issues with precision and collision masks is a key issue to us, thanks for bringing it up !
we also will fix the graphics to reflect what's foreground and what's background better !