Gravity Hook is Great!
Some games just get better the more time you put into them, and that describes Gravity Hook to a tee. At first glance, it might be hard to see what separates the game from the many other climbers on mobile devices. Your little robot is sitting at the bottom of the screen, and those green circular things grab your attention. Tapping one, as you would expect, extends your hook and up you go. You snag the next one, and up again. Well, sure. Now there aren’t any green orbs, so you tap one of those blue ones. You reel yourself in and… ka-boom.
Okay, so those ones are dangerous. Stick to the green ones where you can. Instead of grabbing that blue one near you, you stretch the hook out to a green one that’s farther up the screen. You snag it, and… drop. You’ll soon learn the lesson that there are limits to how far you can pull yourself. You can’t just stick to those safe green orbs, but what can you do to stay alive while using those explosive ones? At about this time, you start to realize that this isn’t just another simple game of mindless tapping.
There’s a lot going on in the process of climbing up these endless mine shafts. The key to it all is understanding how momentum works. You’re not so much grappling from one point to the next as you are sling-shotting yourself. Since the tensile strength of your hook gets weaker the more you extend it, you have to learn how to spot the grappling points that will shoot you the farthest without being too distant to properly catch onto.
Direction is also important. While you’ll generally want to climb straight up, there are times where angling yourself can benefit you. Bouncing off of walls can help you ascend when grapple points fail you, and depending on how the grapple points are laid out you may need to do so in order to reach the next one. It can also help you reach safer types of grappling points, which is another major factor in your climbing.
As you play, you’ll come across many different types of grappling points. Understanding how each of them works is vital to your survival. One of the big things most of them share is in how you really shouldn’t linger around them. Some will explode, some will fall out of the sky and pull you down with them, and others just get in your way. They’re all visually distinct, so once you learn what each one is about you’ll know what you have to do. Pulling it off is another matter, of course.
All of this comes together in a game with considerably more depth and nuance than you might first guess. There’s a great feeling of mastery that sets in as you develop your skills and learn how to reach greater and greater heights. The excellent music and clean, clear visual design make great companions as you come to grips with all of the details of the mechanics.
Gravity Hook is a very demanding game in many ways, but there’s just something about it that makes you want to keep trying no matter how many times you fall. Perhaps it’s the feeling that there’s always something new to pick up that will help you go even higher? Whatever the reason, this is one pick-and-play game that has some serious staying power.