A Reckless Disregard For Gravity

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Ever since I played The Wonderful End of the World, I've appreciated Dejobaan Games approach to game development. It can all be summed up in one word: fun. Everything about their games is fun, right down to the loading screen. And they don't take themselves too seriously. Case in point: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity. (The official title for this game has about 25 AAA's preceding it, but that's lame, so I'm going to stick with "A Reckless Disregard for Gravity.")

It's a simple game. You start at the top of a huge series of skyscrapers. Strewn about the skyscape are spectators, point beacons, and lots of odd, free-floating structures. Then all you have to do is jump. And not die, of course.

Hitting anything on the way down face-on will instantly kill you, but glancing off structures just spins you out of control. In the tight spaces between buildings though, that could easily lead to a faceplant on top of somebody's roof. On the way down you can aim for point targets, or spectators and protesters who can give you points if you wave at them or flip them off, respectively. The real points are in hugs and kisses though. Hugs are when you get close enough to a building that it lights up. Kisses are when you stay close to that building, riding all the way down just inches from its surface. When you get near the landing pad, just deploy your parachute.

You win points to accumulate teeth, which you use to buy new levels--levels such as “Focus on Partial Nudity” and “Whipped Up and Awesome”. Each level offers new opportunities to collect points and teeth, as well as new skyscapes to navigate. I've played 8 or 9 levels so far; there are 10 included in this pre-release demo. There's a fair amount of levels unavailable to play and several more that are being worked on right now, but if you pre-order the full game, you get the rest of the levels that are complete as well as $10 off the final price.

Why You Should Check This Out: A Reckless Disregard for Gravity is a game about jumping off impossibly high skyscrapers. It's level design full of fake advertisements, levels named things like “Everyone Loves You or Hates You” and a sales pitch straight from a late-night extreme infomercial upon exit just leaves you with an impression of a game that doesn't take itself too seriously. This game is about pure fun.

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Comments

I played this awhile ago. Interesting concept, I never felt a real sense of speed, and that really killed it for me.

Saw this at the Indy Games Festival in Boston a few months ago - I think I agree with Faceless Clock that the sense of speed wasn't quite there for me, but then that's a good thing, because my main recurring nightmare is of falling...

I gave it a try. It was alright. I wouldn't want to buy the full version and play it regularly, but it was fairly amusing.

The controls felt clunky and you don't really move as fast as I'd expect you to. It was a nice distraction for 20-30 minutes.

I like how one of the blue blocks says "Those guys that tell you to hit Alt-F4 for God Mode are assholes."

I like the presentation of the game overall but the actual mechanics fall (no pun intended) kind of flat. Especially since I've been playing Mirror's Edge recently and the sense of motion conveyed in that game is pretty top notch. It just feels like an arcadey tunnel minigame rather than something with meat to it. It's fun for what it is but even a $15 price point won't make me leap out (pun intended) to buy it.

I agree with Latrine. It's kind of fun, but the mechanics are a bit too simple (though challenging enough for me to keep trying to get 5 stars). I was really digging the presentation, though, especially the bit when you click to buy and the narrator goes on about trapping pixies in Boston to write the code for flipping off old people, but there is apparently a need to continue to trap the pixies because they "get dysentery just like your oxen do every time you cross the Missouri River on your home computer". That alone made me want to buy the game, but the gameplay itself just wasn't enough to put me over the edge (ouch! no pun intended at all). I highly recommend installing the demo just to listen to the guy talk during the "buy this!" screen, either after you click "grab" or "bye".

Definitely the presentation sells it well. Similarly to The World Ends With You, it's arguably a Katamari clone, but the presentation (especially the arcade level) really sells it. I mainly dug the "fun" vibe that Dejobaan gives off.

This is fun. Perhaps not a pay-for-it fun, but fun nonetheless.

This looks wonderful. Unfortunately I'm on the wrong platform for the foreseeable.

grobstein wrote:

This looks wonderful. Unfortunately I'm on the wrong platform for the foreseeable.

It'd probably run fine in a VM, it's not a very demanding game.

This demo convinced me to buy...The Wonderful End of the World which is on sale on Impulse for $5.

Latrine wrote:

This demo convinced me to buy...The Wonderful End of the World which is on sale on Impulse for $5.

$10 now. That must have been a quick sale.

Phew! Finally got to try out AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I love the style. Agree that the feel of the game is not quite perfect (although maybe gradually building up to faster levels is the way to go). I felt pretty helpless, falling down among the skyscrapers and bumping into stuff, but I guess that's how it should feel when you don't really know how to play.

Dax wrote:
Latrine wrote:

This demo convinced me to buy...The Wonderful End of the World which is on sale on Impulse for $5.

$10 now. That must have been a quick sale.

It was a weekend sale. I got in on the tail end.

Thanks for the preview and (to those who left comments) your feedback. And a special thanks to those who picked up Wonderful and/or the Aaaaa! pre-release -- as we're an indie studio, and each order goes directly to further development efforts. I would also like to thank my mother for giving birth to me. Even though the subsequent decades have sometimes been difficult, I am pleased to have been born. To wit, Aaaaa! would not have been possible without you and your uterine magic. I'd like to thank my father, who, many years ago, impreg-

Nevermind. I'm taking some of the thoughts you guys have posted here, and am pasting them into our internal forums so that we can chew on and digest them. But one thing I've realized is that we could be doing a much better job of demonstrating that the gameplay increases in complexity as you progress. By the time you have all the items unlocked, you're not only weaving between objects, but are hitting buttons to flip off protesters, slamming espresso shots at the right time, giving a big thumbs-up to your fans, spraypainting municipal buildings, threading the needle, and so forth. I'm hoping that all that jazz makes for a more complex gameplay experience.

Will it work? I dunno!

dejobaan wrote:

By the time you have all the items unlocked, you're not only weaving between objects, but are hitting buttons to flip off protesters, slamming espresso shots at the right time, giving a big thumbs-up to your fans, spraypainting municipal buildings, threading the needle, and so forth. I'm hoping that all that jazz makes for a more complex gameplay experience.

This stuff does sound intriguing. Is it taught at all in the game? I found myself flying past spectators (I thought?) but had no idea whether I could make rude or nice gestures at them. Perhaps I was just being thick-headed.

> grobstein
> Intern
> Location: Cambridge, MA

You live roughly 2.3 miles from us.

> Is it taught at all in the game? I found myself flying past spectators (I thought?) but had no idea whether I could make rude or nice gestures at them.

They actually all wake up when you get certain items. For example, the Flip-It Glove causes spectators to chime in, giving you the opportunity to flip 'em off.

> Perhaps I was just being thick-headed.

No! It seems to me that we need to convey the EXCITEMENT better. Then, we will sell more. Then, I can buy my little daughter some shoes.

I will have to have a daughter first.

I was wondering while playing the demo, whether speeding up the fall would give it a bit more of a rush, but then some of the levels would probably be too short, or make the player feel that there is too much to try to do at once to get 5 stars (I've yet to get a 5th star, to be honest). The only other thing I could think of would be to indicate the speed with better visual and audio cues-- I never pay attention to the "speed" sidebar while falling, and I only noticed it while checking out the HUD before a jump. Instead, perhaps more "air lines" like the Naruto games or Auto Modellista . Perhaps something along those lines could give more of a falling sensation, instead of a floating-down-mildly-out-of-control sensation?

> WipEout
> Junior Executive
> Location: San Francisco, CA

I do not live near San Francisco, but I have visited recently, and love the food. Chinatown is amazing, and as I am half Japanese, I enjoy the fact that there exists a Japantown. We had a Japantown here in Cambridge. It was one building. It closed down.

But I digress! I also don't pay attention to the speed readout on the HUD, and thought that was just me. Perhaps painting the higher dots red would make a difference. But I suspect that we really need more than that. Apropos your Naruto and Auto Modellista links, I have added to our to-do for the launch:

> Add to the sensation of speed via "speed lines," dotted lines, or anything see if Ryan can come up with some ideas. [Ichiro] [Ryan]

I am going to speak to our artist about it. I may not like the answer he gives me.

Any possibility of this showing up on Steam?

As far as critique goes, one thing I noticed was that after a while it started to seem like you were flying down a tunnel rather than falling. I also noticed that spinning helped to dispel this feeling and make the game faster. Is there any reward for spinning beyond getting a better point of view later in the game?

From the article title, I was really hoping that this was about boobs. Never mind, the game looks interesting, if both vertigo- and migraine-inducing.

Yeah I never got to the espresso shots, spraypainting or threading the needle or I would've included them in the article. Good info to know!

I saw the node to purchase the espresso shots, but was unable to get to it as you have to unlock the nodes sequentially (they have to be connected to an unlocked node, anyway) to get to it. Unfortunately, the espresso shot was just too far away to get to in the demo, at least. Or perhaps not, and I just haven't played it enough...?

> Any possibility of this showing up on Steam?

Yes! Coming soon to a Steam near you.

> Unfortunately, the espresso shot was just too far away to get to in the demo, at least.

Also yes. We kept stuff in reserve.

dear all,
i really like this game but i cant play completly cause i dont know many things.
could u pls guide me how to play this game?
i dont know how to make gravity or say hi with people?
i dont know the bottom to press or need i have to play with joystick?
if anybody see this comment pls reply or suggest me how to make it.
thank you
Janie