The Gravity Trickster Review (PS5)

Playing The Gravity Trickster brought back vibes and memories of a game that was special to us in The United States, Europe, and in Japan. The original game in question has three separate names for its three regions. In Japan it was known as “KulaQuest”, in Europe as “Kula World”, and in North America, with the sad but true name, “Roll Away”.  I can not speak for my Japanese and European counterparts, but in North America, this game did not sell well and was not sought after in any way during or after its initial run. It would take a quarter century later before an individual named Szilard Papp created a spiritual successor to that game. He made a project of love that lasted nearly half a decade to complete.

PS4 and PS5 versions

Szilard’s The Gravity Trickster project first came to life with an short announcement on Facebook by it’s creator around the near the of 2021. A couple of posts followed throughout 2022 and the beginning of 2023, to eventually the moment the game got its release in july 2023 on PS4. Although the game at that point is compatible with PS5. Papp decided to create a specific PS5 version.

This PS5 version came out on December 22, 2023. As I have not played the Sony PlayStation 4 version of this game, I will go by what I saw from trailer releases and updates from Szilard on this.  Since its release, there have been at least four patches that covered items like a major glitch on the last level of the game, Level 150 where a part of the level was inaccessible and thus couldn’t be finished, a sound queue when all collectables or keys are gathered in a level and fixing language mistakes when this game was translated in an astonishing seventeen languages,. Something you do not see in games. Another significant milestone is the fact that Szilard made the game significantly size smaller. The makers of Call of Duty need to hire Szilard to work on that one task alone.

Level heavy

There are 150 levels and 30 bonus levels, which you unlock when you collect “BONUS” blocks. You must collect all 5 BONUS-blocks in the 5-level segments to be able to access that bonus level. but unlike the other 5 levels you get just one chance to clear it, miss it and you got to do those 5 levels again just to get a chance to do this over.  The first five levels of “The Gravity Trickster” are like the beginning levels of the aforementioned “KulaQuest/Kula World/Roll Away” and get your bearings straight for the game, but as you progress there are many other obstacles in your way like jumps, transporters, lasers, enemies of different varieties, spikes, dead ends, force fields, and other types. This game does not hold your hand for too long and it is extremely challenging but in a good way. It personally took me two days to get past Stage 10 as the inverted jumps and spikes kept getting the best of me.

Upgrades and new features

For the PS5 version of the game many upgrades were implemented including a better frame rate of 120 frames per second, haptic feedback, and also utilization of the controller speaker. A feature which has not been utilized much by game developers. There was also major improvements on draw distance on the PS5 version. The PS4 version seemed like it was spaced out and threw off the senses of gamers.

Overall this game is fantastic and would highly recommend if you were a fan of the original “KulaQuest/Kula World/Roll Away”. It is graphically stunning, sounds great, and is challenging with a variety large of stages. The only drawback is that there are only 180 overall stages between regular and bonus stages. This, opposed to the 220 in the original Sony PlayStation 1 version of “KulaQuest/Kula World/Roll Away”. An additional gripe is that there is no way – at least on the Sony PlayStation 5 version – to get back to the main menu of the game. The only way to exit is to get to the system main menu and end it that way. With a game that utilizes saves, this can become a potential problem some gamers might face.