Gravity Ghost

Gravity Ghost is a beautiful game, with pastel crayon-like art that looks much like an illustrated children's book come to life on your computer screen. It's a journey that starts with joy and innocence. Iona, the main character, hops from planet to planet, collecting special flowers scattered among her interplanetary travels. These flowers help Iona collect friendly animal spirits that are lost and looking for a way home as well as terraform planets and grow her hair. But shortly after her first adventure, Iona admits she's a ghost as well, and the happy mood is somewhat tempered as she spends time revisiting her past and what happened to her. Although the storytelling becomes more somber during these introspective moments, especially since the introduction and six star systems represent a stage in Iona's life (and death), the trip through the cosmos remains purely joyous fun thanks to the lack of failure provided in the game.

Players will discover lots of fun simply bouncing around each solar system, terraforming planets and rescuing animal spirits at will. The sense of being able to experiment with the physics of each planet provides a clever trial-and-error mechanic, allowing players to come up with clever solutions to puzzle problems. Each star system can be revisited and replayed as many times as you'd like -- kids can try collecting all the flowers, find all the tricks that make more flowers spawn, or see if they can go straight for the star, which provides an exit to the level. They also could try terraforming planets differently to see whether a softer (slower) or harder (faster, bouncier) gravity field would help them get that last elusive flower on the screen. Although the overall gameplay is about three hours long, Gravity Ghost allows a sandbox of creativity so players can mess around in a safe, friendly environment without fear of failure.