Inspiral: Echoes of Gravity

*Turns into a star* Ow the asteroids hurt!

plays like a basic gravity demo and one still in the alpha stages at that. to quote some community notes i saw after being disappointed "i could get more out of a 25c ramen packet"

Meh...

It's really dull and grindy. You're stuck grabbing the small tiny asteroids for majority of the game. Any slight mistake is immediately punished. No gameplay beyond that, it looks like the dev kept a roguelike system as a separate DLC.

A game where you start as a little asteroid and grow up to become a black hole. I've made it up to 135k mass and haven't found anything further. For it's price, it's a fun little game but as a star, planets orbiting you randomly disappear, which is very disheartening.

Is this a terrible game? No. Is it a great game? No. It hovers in the middle ground of novelty and playability. A simple but engaging design wherein the player collides with other asteroids to accumulate mass. It then, however changes the established gameplay rules where rapidly smashing into other celestial objects penalizes the player by reducing mass. You have to slowly approach and trap satellites into your orbit and then press a key to absorb them. None of this explained. It is a frustrating trial and error approach over the span of about an hour. While the achievements are simple progression and the title itself is appropriately priced, I cannot recommend this game, even as a time waster.