Gravity Lab Guide: Rotating the Lab Without Getting Stuck
Gravity Lab has two controls: turn the lab 90 degrees left, or turn it 90 degrees right. After every turn, Orbi the robot ball and every crate in the room fall toward the new floor, and keep falling until something stops them. The whole puzzle is choosing the order of turns that drops Orbi into the green exit hatch.
The difficulty is that nothing falls alone. A turn meant for Orbi also moves every crate, and a crate that slides into the wrong corner can block the only route for the rest of the lab.
Three wings, sixty labs
| Wing | Adds | Boss |
|---|---|---|
| Test Chambers | crates, spikes, glass | Crusher |
| Warp Wing | portals, plates and doors | Warp-O |
| Laser Core | lasers | Overload |
Each wing has 20 labs, and the 20th is its boss. Orbi introduces every new idea with one line the first time it appears, and those lines double as the rules:
- Crates fall too, so they work as steps or as walls.
- Glass breaks when a crate falls onto it, while Orbi is too light to crack it.
- Portals send anything to the matching portal, still falling.
- Doors open while something sits on the round plate.
- Lasers destroy Orbi, and a crate in the beam blocks them.
Spikes are fatal to Orbi from any direction, but a crate simply lands on them, which makes a crate the usual way to cover a row of spikes.
The bosses
All three are beaten the same way, by dropping crates on them, and each adds a condition. Crusher in the Test Chambers takes three crates, and Orbi must never touch it. Warp-O in the Warp Wing teleports somewhere else after every hit, so the crates have to be ready for wherever it lands next. Overload in the Laser Core carries a shield, and only its glowing open side can be hit.
Par is the fewest moves possible
Every lab's par comes from a solver that searches all possible sequences of turns and finds the shortest one. Three stars need par exactly. Two stars allow a little slack: par plus 35% of par, and never fewer than two extra moves. Anything that reaches the exit earns one.
| Wing | Shortest | Longest | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Test Chambers | 2 | 14 | 146 |
| Warp Wing | 4 | 15 | 193 |
| Laser Core | 5 | 16 | 214 |
Those are par values in turns: the shortest and longest par in each wing, and the sum for all twenty labs. The very first lab, Hello Gravity, can be solved in two turns. The longest par in the game is 16, for the Laser Core's boss lab. A full three-star run of the game takes exactly 553 turns.
Undo, restart and hints
Undo steps back one move at any time and gives the move back, so it costs nothing toward stars. It is often a better tool than restart, since many mistakes are only one turn deep.
Hints run the same solver live, from the exact position on screen, and show the next correct turn along with how many turns are left from there. Each hint is used up, and a new one is earned for every lab finished with three stars. If the position has become impossible, Orbi says the lab is stuck and suggests undo or restart, and no hint is spent.
The labs themselves were built with help from a generator. It proposes candidate rooms and keeps only those where every mechanic in the room matters to the solution, which is why a crate or a portal in Gravity Lab is almost never decoration.
On a keyboard, the left arrow or A turns the lab one way and the right arrow or D the other. Z or U undoes, R restarts and H asks for a hint.
