izigame.me

TL;DR

When this game is good, it's REALLY good. When this game is bad, it's absolutely terrible. It's like the enemy placement in some levels were designed specifically to break the flow and frustrate you.
It's hard for me to recommend a product that has such variance in its quality, but if you think it looks kinda cool, you can give it a try. Gravity Circuit is bundled with Berserk Boy and recommend that game for sure.

----Summary

You play as Kai, the robot designated "Gravity Circuit". His cohorts are for some reason evil now, and you need to stop them from... doing bad things in various places. Why are they doing bad things? Why don't you remember anything? Guess we'll just have to kill all our old friends to figure it out.
I played on the Normal difficulty.

----Positives

Pixel Graphics Look Incredible
Finally, a pixel art game that has the decency to not turn the ugly blur filters on that people with bad eyesight like. While the background are fully colored, the characters and enemies use only a few colors. It looks very good. they didn't cheap out on the number of frames either. For the first time in a while, I would say that the choice of limited colors for the characters is a stylistic choice, and not a limitation of the artist.
I absolutely love how expressive the game is, one of my favorite things being enemies spinning like crazy when you beat them or punch them with a special power. It's easy to see where my guy is at all times.
Finally, the aesthetic itself is pretty cool. The bulky robots with simplistic, but neat designs is very nice to look at.
This gets a 7/7 metal slugs from me.
Side note, this game does not have a 16:9 resolution. The sides get cut off slightly unless you stretch it, and you SHOULD NOT.
Music Is Amazing
Reminds me of music from Mega Man X and Power Rangers - The Movie (SNES) for some reason. It's very, VERY good electronic music, and isn't going for a "retro" style, even if visually the game is kind of going for that. This is the quality of stuff you'd get from PS1 Era Capcom.
Dominic Ninmark, the composer, did a fantastic job. He has a YouTube channel you should check out if you liked this music. Part of the reason I know about the game at all was because he posted the soundtrack on his channel.
The soundtrack is definitely worth a purchase.
Lots of Depth
The gameplay reminds me a lot of Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man and Shatterhand. If you've never played Shatterhand before, you should give it a try, it's great. Anyway...
Gravity Circuit certainly does it's own thing in terms of speed and platforming challenge. It attempts (attempts) to create its own flow out by allowing you to dash around, jump off of walls, pick up enemies to throw them and swing from your hookshot. When it works, it works great.
Kai is fairly customizable with mix and match upgrades, and the game does a decent job of letting you get about 70% of them without having to grind at all. That's an economy I can get behind. The very generous parry move you can buy was a stand out for me. There are some upgrades that I think should be made part of the base kit, like the one that causes collectible objects to fly to you, or maybe the one that charges your special meter when hitting enemies, but to each his own I guess.
PROTIP: The paint jobs aren't cosmetic, they give you additional abilities, some of which are VERY helpful. So if you find one, you should get it.
You Can Rebind The Downward Slide
Finally, someone with a brain figured out you can assign a single button to something that would require two buttons... on an NES controller. Kai has the Mega Man slide, and uses the same button combination to activate it (Down+Jump). Problem is, sometimes, you don't want to slide when you want to jump. Specifically right after I use the downward kick on an enemy. Well, we aren't using NES controllers anymore, so being able to put it on another button is the objectively correct approach. The triangle button goes unused, so put it on that, and never slide when you meant to jump every again. Why this is under "Accessibility" options is a mystery.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS, I'M NOT EVEN JOKING!!!!

----Negatives

Obnoxious Level Design
Not every level is bad; some are honestly fantastic. But every level that is bad is obnoxiously bad. Awful enemy placement, bulky enemies stuck in tight space so you have to wait to move on, in a few instances, the game will spawn you right next to an enemy when you fall in a pit or get hit by spikes. At least the spikes don't kill you instantly.
I'd say about 50% of the levels are good, while the other 50% are awful. The final gauntlet of stages are particularly awful.
Ledge Grabbing Causes Problems
This is the second game I've played that messes with Mega Man X's wall sliding. STOP. The most obnoxious thing that would often get me killed is that I would approach the wall slightly too high and not be able to kick off of it. This is due to detection for the wall slide conflicting with the detection for the ledge grab. NEVER at any point did I want to grab a ledge instead of wall slide or wall jump in my entire playthrough. I don't understand. Mega Man X figured this out in the 90's, why do we feel the need to try and fix what isn't broken? And it's not like you can avoid this problem, as many stages are designed around using the wall jump mechanic.
The edge grab mechanic feels like jank and is NOT an improvement in any way.
Enemies Take Way To Many Hits To Kill
For a fast paced game, you'd think the majority of enemies you face would be easy to destroy on your way to the objective. That's not the case in Gravity Circuit. Every enemy requires at least 2 hits to defeat, often more. Some of the turret enemies take 4 hits to kill. WHY????
My guess would be to incentivize you to use the throw mechanic, which while mostly functional is not as nice as it could be. Otherwise, this is time wasting nonsense and a test of my patience. Another game where zooming past enemies is better than engaging with them. Which is probably why the level design often forces you to deal with an enemy that takes several hits to kill to progress. What a shame. Most enemy behaviors are fair enough if you see them a couple of times. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if ending up inside enemies wasn't as easy as it is. I'm so tired of running into enemies because I miscounted the number of hits the enemy takes to kill.
To Many Things To Keep Track Of On Screen
This doesn't apply to every boss or level, but there'll be times where you are expected to keep track of a lot of moving objects on screen. Like way too many. That drill boss is something else. I have to wonder if this was tested on a smaller screen because it's a lot to handle if you don't know what's coming.
I sometimes think this game is way too much. It's not all the time, but enough to annoy.

----Conclusion

I hate to say it, but I don't think I can recommend this game. It looks and sounds so good. It's performant and full of depth, but I just can't reconcile the frustrating bits. When I think of a good game, it's a game that I want to play again. Even though the game has no lives, allowing me to try parts I'm struggling with over and over again until I get it, the game is still very frustrating and often boring as a result. Not getting the hookshot exactly right in a do or die section is only thrilling for so long. As short as Gravity Circuit is (took me about 5 hours to beat), I currently have no desire to play it again, nor do I think I'll be returning some time in the future. And I think that's a real shame.