Grapple Dog analysis

The platform games are the best. It's just an opinion, with no more, but it has a basis that bases it. Platform games are accessible and have an immediacy that make them ideal experimentation fields, so open to new ideas and eccentricities as their responsible ones want. Platform games have always been the best gateway to this beautiful hobby, for the abundance of referents mainstream and by the variety of settings, shades, artistic styles and mutations that can be found; There are platform games where you do not move the character you jump, and others in which there are not even platforms. They are the purest form of the action game. You move, there is a hole in the ground and you have to overcome it. From there, the possibilities are endless.

You can, for example, put a hook that complements the jump; What a grateful resource! It is just what it does grapple dog , the colorful new game of Joseph Gribbin, ex nitrome that from one time to this part has been launched to independent development, testing luck first with the puzzles and now with the platforms. In Grapple Dog you are Paul, a pert, shortly after freeing Nul, a villain who threatens to dominate or destroy the world, is a useful hook; Armed with the new tool of him, Paul gets hands on the work to stop Nul and avoid a dark final.

On his way to stop Nul, Paul must travel a series of islands distributed over six worlds. Following that way of designing platform games that is difficult not to associate Nintendo (because of the enormous influence of the titles that popularize it, but also to come from Nintendo most games mainstream that work it), Grapple Dog converts every island / level In small essay on a mechanics or a specific obstacle type, presenting it and developing it with great diligence; Gribbin proposes ideas and explores them with great wit, always with the jump and the hook as a base, and when he finishes the level put them in fallow, filed until it is required later. What at one level is the central idea in another later can be simply a resource, a reason that returns as an echo that ends up taking cohesion and form to the adventure of Paul.

It is a very effective formula and that here is deployed with elegance and intelligence; It is a formula, yes, so it costs not to compare it with others, although Grapple Dog strives to have a unique personality. First at the controls, with a Paul that runs at a very specific speed, sometimes surprisingly slow but who manages to make a good contrast with the limited uses (you can only hook it on some surfaces, a fundamental point in the design of the game ) But that much expands the expressiveness of the movement: although naturally tends to vertical, A takes advantage of the movement to reach high platforms or sneak into higher gaps, from time to time the game allows you to experiment with more horizontal uses. Taking advantage of the impulse and releasing the hook at the right time, Pablo is fired forward at great speed. It is not a technique that is explored a lot at the main levels, although from time to time there is a diamond (the main collection of the game; it is essential to get a certain number to unlock access to the heads of each world) that asks you to use it And it is very useful in the counter arrest, an optional but highly recommended way. Graphics and music, on the other hand, also put from their part to make Grapple Dog stand out: the pixel art is perfect, and each Sprite is animated with a grace that effectively refers to Nitrome, and the soundtrack is a peach Fear, simple and plainly.

In the long run, Grapped Dog may have gone well a more agile rhythm, a little more speed, a lighter weight; The levels have a very appropriate extension, but I have the feeling of the passage to which Paul explores them makes themselves perceived more dense or heavy than they are actually. It is one of those games in which it is very annoying to leave a single collectable without collecting, especially because of the shadow of the obligation that these diamonds have on them: it wants to find them all, because most are hidden with very good taste, but need them for Open the last door of each world places them in an uncomfortable position in which or they really need to move forward or you can ignore them completely because you have more than enough. But platform games, such as the mayor, are necessary, and their particularities or even their trips are at the end contingents. Grapple dog can proudly peak the flag of platform games: your proposal is accessible and interesting, full of mime and attention to detail, and is developed with enough taste and intelligence to know that if we see Pablo again surely there will be Learned enough new tricks like that we want to spend time with him again.

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