GRAV Preview

GRAV is in parts both beautiful and frustrating. Described as a crafting-cum-survival sandbox with multiplayer action elements, the game takes a pinch of Minecraft and a dash of Lost Planet and, oddly, a sprinkle of Orion.

You begin the game spawned onto a planet on which the population consists mainly of blobs that look roughly like someone’s flu-induced sputum. After doing what humans do best (slaughter wildlife and dredge resources) your inventory will slowly fill.

There are three main categories of craftable material in GRAV: wood, fossils and ore. Each can be obtained by aiming your omni-tool at them and firing a stream of stack-collecting light. Primitive it might be, but GRAV is more than just hoarding resources.

Once you’ve grabbed yourself a wooden bat and begun to slaughter fauna just that little bit more effectively, your crafting tree expands to include armour and primitive ranged weapons. The natural progression from here is to set yourself a base and explore other planets in a spaceship. Everything in GRAV is created through blueprints, so for more expansive and complicated buildings you’ll have to scour the world for them. That in itself is a pleasure: the worlds created by the game’s engines are stunning, bursting with colour, sunlight (or moonlight) flora and fauna. It’s very easy to ramble off trying to reach faraway wonders.

If you should wander away though, you will probably get lost. GRAV has no minimap – just a set of coordinates. It’s usually worth mapping your way around by remembering where other players’ half-finished bases are, and there are a lot of them.

The players in GRAV are a friendly bunch. They spend most of their time gathering resources and base building rather than wantonly murdering each other. If someone does kill a few players they are tainted with a “dangerous” tag that tells others to avoid them.

Perhaps the main reason that most players in GRAV don’t bother with PvP is that it is utterly tedious. I watched two players circle each other left-clicking for about five minutes before one fell over. Those looking to level up quick should be wary that the game gets very grindy, too.

That said, gathering with a group of players to take down a bigger monster or delve into a dungeon can be thrilling stuff. Communicating through GRAV’s primitive emoticon system, I managed to dance and point my way into what amounted to a raid. Boss battles are frantic, but only because no-one really had any idea what was going on.

The planets in GRAV’s universe have day and night cycles. As you’d probably expect, night is more dangerous. Players can, however, craft robots and droids for protection. Some, I found, you can use as portable lamplights and as beacons, too.

If you’re wondering where the frustration comes in, allow me to explain: combat isn’t enough fun to warrant actively seeking it out – weapons do such little damage you can run away from many players even if they are spraying you with bullets. Resource gathering is also a chore, both to keep machines in your base running and to gather ammo for your weapons.

The monsters, though varied, jerk across the map and have awful tracking. Their spawn rate is also defined by the highest level player nearby. If a max-level player strolls through your world you’ll be up to your ears in boss monsters before you’ve gone further than crafting a stick.

GRAV is a quintessential Early Access game: there’s definitely something there that has the makings of a fantastic game, but it’s a good number of updates away. A beautiful-looking game with a lot of grand ideas, GRAV certainly should be one to watch in the future.