Welcome to Early Access, a series that covers games that are in available in early release form on Steam. Today’s featured game is the newest title from BitMonster Games, Grav, an action survival game set in space.
What do you do in Grav?
From the few hours that I’ve played Grav, it seems like the goal of the game is to progress far enough to get the rarest crafting materials you can and build the coolest stuff. All the materials you can gather are pretty standard and include wood, ore, gems, and element-x, the material used to upgrade your character. The dungeons are found on the planet map thing, and they display the appropriate level for tackling the challenge. You clear the dungeon, you get some rad stuff.
Any games comparable to Grav?
Grav is a pretty unique game, but I can surmise a few guesses as to where their development team got some inspiration. It seems that the bright colors and general visual style borrow from the trailers and concept of No Man’s Sky, while the crafting and base-building aspects have a lot in common with Starbound. In terms of gameplay I’ve seen some comparisons to Rust, but I don’t know about that.
What does the developer have planned?
It seems like BitMonster wants to add moon exploration and eventually full-on space exploration, but the future is unclear. I’m sure they plan on refining elements that already exist in the game as well as adding new and exciting things to explore; this game could be huge.
How “early release-y” is it?
It’s in alpha, so things are rough. And when I say rough, I mean fairly rough. My framerate is questionable and I have ample processing power (a 780Ti and a 4770k), so I know the issue isn’t on my end. I had issues even getting the game to work at first, but after about 30 minutes of troubleshooting I finally got to play the game.
Is the game worth getting now?
Yeah, I’d say so. There’s a lot of work to be done before this game is great, but if you’re into crafting and exploration then this game should be your jam. It’s in alpha so don’t expect things to go smoothly, but it does show a lot of promise and I think it’s worth your time and money.
Anything silly happen?
I did have one bug that made a high point hilariously anticlimactic. I finally gathered enough resources in dangerous areas to grab myself a gun. In my excitement I made haste toward the nearest dungeon, crappy rusty pistol in tow. Inside I spied a nice little group of gems, ripe for the harvesting. As I made my way over to it a slug-type enemy approached me. Perfect. I equip my trusty rusty firearm and look down the sights, aiming directly at the brain-casing of the abomination that was charging me. “Looks like we’re having escargot for dinner tonight, boys,” I said, to no one. I take a deep breath and pull the trigger and… my game crashed. So that was a thing that happened.
