Indie Games: Gravity Bone

This is one of my favourite independently made games. Just putting it out there. Gravity Bone, made by Brendon Chung of Blendo Games, isn’t a very long game at all, maybe taking up to 15 minutes on your first play-through, but those are 15 minutes well spent. I also advise playing it first, then reading the rest of this. The link has already been put in the name of the game earlier, but here it is again.

See, the beauty of Gravity Bone is that it shouldn’t be 15 minutes long. Gravity Bone is the first couple of levels of a longer game that was never made. These are the tutorial levels at the start of a game, showing you the world and giving you instructions. But then it stops, and that isn’t at all a bad thing. In fact, it’s brilliant.

Gravity Bone’s story is hard to really explain as I’m not entirely sure there is one. There might be, but I’m not too sure. Suffice to say, it may be about a spy or a hit man or someone like that being given contracts to carry out specific work for some reason. It’s not entirely clear, but you create the story within your head, connecting the dots and possibly understanding the game. That is, unless it is complete nonsense.

But I seriously don’t think the story is important. Gravity Bone appears to be a game attempting to break apart video game conventions. Those tutorial levels I mentioned? Yeah, that is the entire game. The game is two stages of tutorial and this creates an air of safety that is broken down later on in the game. We slowly get fed a world which we never fully experience and there’s some sort of beauty in that when you get to the ending.

I might not have given too much information to really get you to play the game, but Gravity Bone definitely needs to be experienced. It is an utter joy and a game I think everyone should play. Give it a go if you’ve got some time on your hands. Yes, it’s a bit artsy, but it’s worth it, I swear.