Gravitar

Judging from the graphics on the box, I should be preparing for a space shooter. Instead I found myself underground with a pistol and a book on navigation. Gravitar from 1993 is a strange beast—partly action game, partly adventure that on PC just can't decide if it wants to be Metroid or Aleister Crowley.

Your task is to penetrate a series of planetary stations and collect things someone clearly irresponsible left there. Each level is roughly like a maze with enemy bunkers, falling platforms and gravitational anomalies that bring you to your knees. The game claims sci-fi ambitions, but the environment feels more like a forgotten military barracks. The atmosphere is dark, sounds clipped, colors sad—exactly how PC adventures were supposed to behave.

Control is simple—arrow keys and shooting on spacebar, jump when you dare. The problem is gravity behaves intricately, and when you go down a staircase and suddenly get pulled upward, you realize the level designer had a strange sense of humor. Firing in midair is lifeless, but the further into the game, the more you adapt to its quirky physics and surprisingly it guides your fingers. The movements aren't smooth like in classic platformers—they're rougher, sharper, as if the character were in steel armor.

Gravitar isn't one of those games written in gold in history books. You moved through a few levels, collected objectives, and then? What was interesting was that such a thing even came to be—the combination of sci-fi adventure with action mechanics wasn't self-evident in the nineties. Graphics hold up, sounds fly, but nothing will captivate you longer than two or three hours.

Today it looks like light entertainment—an old DOS artifact with strange charm. If you're sentimental about nineties technology and gone mad for darker, unpolished games from back then, it's worth trying. You can run it free in a browser and judge for yourself whether gravity plays into your hands.