Airscape: The Fall of Gravity is a decent but unexceptional 2D platformer game. You play as an octopus in a space helmet, sucked out of your ocean and cast off into space for… no apparent reason, honestly (the game has no real plot, and the villain of the game has no clear motivation). Your goal is to navigate through the levels, freeing various sea critters and ultimately, the other octopi who were kidnapped with you, all on the way to defeat the final boss.
This is one of those games which plays heavily with gravity. Gravity orients itself straight downward, including on curved slopes, meaning you can walk along a curved surface without ever having to jump or break your stride, similar to walking around a 3D planet with gravity. However, most platforming sections do only allow one orientation of landing on the platforms, so only select surfaces (marked by grass and similar things) are actually “walkable”.
The game has a fairly simple set of mechanics – you can walk, you can jump, and you can, depending on your particular octopus, do one of several other things (run faster, float, teleport, slow down time, or double jump). As with many such games, the complexity comes almost entirely from the levels, wherein you must contend with twisted gravity, gravity reversals, attacks from missile turrets and moving lasers, bottomless pits, water (which always reorients your gravity according to the direction you’re facing, though you float in it so it doesn’t really matter), poisonous water you can’t spend too much time in without dying, and a very small number of invincible enemy types (no enemies in the game can be beaten). There are switches which are used to open gates and at times reverse gravity, and… that’s about it.
All in all, the game is fairly simple, but it is generally well-executed. The levels are decent enough and generally quite short, making them relatively easy to beat in a short time – if you can do them right. Some of the later levels are quite hard, though, and despite the checkpoints in them can take upwards of ten minutes to 100%. The longest levels are the levels where you unlock your fellow octopi and the final level, where you confront a fairly difficult boss (though thankfully, with very generous checkpointing after each phase).
The graphics look nice and are clean and attractive, and it is always clear what is going on. And if you don’t like the way the screen shifts around, you can change it to change the pace of screen rotation to avoid motion sickness and just keep it working the way you want it to.
Sadly, the game never really feels exceptional. The game is consistently decent, and none of the levels are bad, but none of them are all that great, either. There was never a point in the game where I was wowed by it, and none of the levels really feel particularly organic (though they didn’t feel especially inorganic either – just sort of okay).
It is worth noting that, despite the cute aesthetic, this game is not easy; while it isn’t Super Meat Boy level of hard, it is above-average difficulty for a 2D platformer, and some of the puzzles, particularly water ones, can be pretty finicky.
It took me a bit under five hours to beat, with additional content stretching beyond what is necessary to beat the game which adds several more hours to the playtime.
On the whole, if you’ve already got this in your library and are itching for a 2D platformer, you could do worse… but honestly, you could do better, too. This is just okay.
2.0