Download Gravity Whip for Windows

In 1996 I made my first “real” game. It was called Gravity Whip and combined all my favorite things, a short list of which would be Star Control, Scorched Earth, gravity models, Douglas Adams, and forced misconceptions. The final result is far from complete, The game has no sound and the menus are unpolished, but I haven’t gone back to it since 1996 owing to the fact that I left for a mission for my church to Singapore and two years is a long time to leave a project. By now the code is so antiquated that returning to finish it would be pointless, I’d basically end up staring the project over. However, for reference purposes (I guess) the code is included in the download.

I’m surprised it still runs at all. Stranger still is the fact that XP will run it but DOSBox won’t. I have no idea what I did that caused this program to function so strangely.

But I present this game to you as a special Christmas present. Think of it as a bit of baring my soul to you because there are parts of this I would prefer was lost to time. Still, there are also parts that are pretty cool and maybe you’ll find it amusing or inspiring. That story presented in MANUAL.TXT is one of those things I’d prefer were lost to time. I can’t even bring myself to read it now. And since the MANUAL.TXT shows how much I had yet to learn about making games accessible by making instructions that make sense, here are a few points to get you started.

When you get into the game you can press F1 to bring up a help screen. Here are the keys you will need to know:

F1 – Help

F10 – Exit

Left/right – Adjust angle

up/down – Adjust Power

L-Shift – Speed up adjustments

R-Shift – Fine tune adjustments

W – Change weapon

</> – Adjust Counter (The counter is used differently by different weapons for special effects)

If you can tolerate the oddities of the game it can actually be a lot of fun to play, especially when you do enough damage to a planet or sun to blow them up. Oh, did I mention you can blow up planets and suns?

Download Gravity Whip for Windows