Grapple Dog Review

A Pendulum of Platforming-A Grapple Dog Review

After viewing its trailer some time ago I was immediately intrigued with Medallion Games' Grapple Dog due to its seemingly simple artstyle and mechanics. From then I followed the game on and off until it magically appeared on my steam frontpage, as many of these reviews tend to play out, and gave it a shot. So, with all that in mind, does Grapple Dog deliver on it's simple premise or does it fail to accomplish even the basics?

Smooth and Simple

Grapple Dog is a 2D platformer through and through, and with that it falls into place with the rest of the genre in a standardized manner. There are various collectables from gems to fruit (that if you collect enough of in a level you get more gems) to even little medallions that unlock extra levels. As for your base abilities you can jump, dive bomb, and sprint in a similar style to mario 3 in which you build up to your max speed by moving continuously for a bit. It's all illustrated in a way that is immediately familiar to anyone who is a fan of these type of games, and the polished visual style remains consistent throughout the whole adventure.

However, Grapple Dog mixes things up with it's main feature presented right in the title of the game: the grapple hook. It's extremely simple, as you latch on to anything distinctly blue colored and use momentum in a normal curve to swing all around. This really opens the floodgates for speed running and all sorts of challenges as you can use said momentum to fling quickly past obstacles. 

Grapple Dog even plays into this by having optional speed medals for every level that you earn for completing them in a certain time frame. While I didn't delve too much into this (collecting all the gems as I completed all the main levels took me around 8 hours) I appreciate the added encouragement to the speed run community that devs are starting to put in their games. 

I especially enjoyed all the little gimmicks and special obstacles any one level could bring, whether I'd be swinging along moving gears or bouncing off chubby polar bears. There is a genuine essence of cute little moments here that put a little smile on my face, and nothing was so overwhelming that it felt out of place. 

On the sense of style, Grapple Dog holds a very clean and polished look. All platforms are very boldly outlined and no jump is obscured or hard to gage. Also, the soundtrack and audio work is top notch, with absolutely electrifying tracks that react to your in game state-being underwater will accordingly distort the music, as does taking damage for a brief moment. These combine to make a very cohesive style that embodies the joy of swinging from obstacle to obstacle in the most fun way possible. 

There's also a (completely skippable) little story here along the way, as you travel with your crew across the seas from level to level to stop a robot invasion. In a similar sense to what I previously mentioned about OlliOlli World, these little characters and quips add that little tinge here that might have been missed without them. 

A Bit of Tuning Needed

While I praised it's very simple style of visuals I do find that this style kept the devs in a bit of a bind in terms of what they could do for environments. What results (outside of a few stand out levels) is a very bog-standard slew of ice, fire, water, and grassy worlds that you've seen a million times over. Not to say that they're aren't filled with some interesting gimmicks (a pronounced lack of ice physics was great), but the visuals themselves felt wholly generic in some areas despite their polish. 

The level design is also a smidge hit or miss at times, but really comes to it's head at the boss fights. Whereas the levels range from pretty good to great in their execution, the bosses are just a real sour spot on it all. Outside of the beginning boss, who makes a reskinned return later on, most bosses involve waiting for a long amount of time for an opening to appear and repeating the cycle 5-6 times. It's definitely slow, and a death risks repeating what feel like 10 minute bouts of going through very easy phases to get back to what killed you. If I could describe it in a concise way, I'd say that it is simply disappointing to have the pace grind to a halt as you slowly progress through a boring boss fight after sets of exhilarating main levels.

And for one last little nitpick here, I want to add that the air control physics here are at times "off." They're perfectly serviceable for the main game, but there are sections here and there that I went through to pick up collectables where I needed fine air control and there just wasn't any. This led to this sort of imprecise teeter totter where I couldn't properly align myself where I wanted to fall. One of those "hard to explain until you experience it yourself" type of things but worth mentioning regardless. 

Verdict

Grapple Dog is for sure a fun time, but it left me a bit mixed in some areas as it went on. For completionists there's a healthy 10+ hours of content crammed into this package, but I'm not entirely sure that all of it is on the same standard of quality. It can be fun but just make sure you go in understanding it can be a bit wonky at moments. 

8.1/10-Fun and stylized, with it's fair share of quirks