
Completely Stretchy Review
It’s that old story: an employee gets on the monorail to work, is running late, activates the machine, things go wrong… No, I’m not talking about that Gordon Freeman game, I’m talking about the first-person, mostly-cosy adventure platformer Completely Stretchy!
As the game starts, the Grombi Isles are pretty peaceful. There’s a protest going that blocks certain roads because you can explore all you like once things have opened up. Like I said, you activate a machine and things go wrong, and the islands are left without power for the most part. So, you have to pick up these little balls of electricity (called Elektros), pop them into the machine, and put things back to normal. Oh, and the accident turned you blue and gave you a long, sticky arm which is useful for reaching high shelves or swinging from pretty much anything. Pretty typical stuff.
While you can run and jump, most of your conveyance will be through the use of grabbing hold of anything within reach and flinging yourself through the air. I was really happy with how swinging feels, and I think most of that is down to how your arm will grab hold of anything nearby when you hold the button. That’s right, you don’t need to be aiming at trees to grab hold of them, you just have to be close enough. Admittedly, you also have to be not aimed at anything in particular, because random walls can put an immediate stop to your traversal.
The Grombi Isles are split into three islands: the town one, the industrial one, and the forest one. Each has Elektros hidden around, and people who have managed to pick them up to keep aside to give away as rewards when you do things for them. Deliver a package, find missing kids, gather 10 specific fruits, hit the right buttons… There’s quite a variety of side quests, and the reason I’ve been thinking of this as a cosy game is because there’s no downside to failing at anything. Just restart really easily, and give it another go.
As you explore, you will discover relics that help you out, and you need them to finish Completely Stretchy. So, exploration is important and was likely why it took me about five hours to finish the game. I didn’t get all of the Elektros or finish all of the side quests because some of them are quite tricky and I wanted to go back to them. To perhaps illustrate how important exploration is, on my third trip to the jungle island, I stumbled across entire areas I hadn’t seen before, despite having been pretty thorough. At least, I thought that I had been.
Launching yourself around the Grombi Isles is really fun, and the weird graphics really bring things to life. There are different types of Grombi — some are a head on a leg, others bipedal, and still others appear to be just giant heads. Like I said, weird, but in a fun way! The physics behind your stretchy arm can be a little janky, so more realistic graphics would only harm the enjoyment.
While playing for this review, a bug managed to softlock me behind a door. While I reported this, and it was dealt with I’ve been assured, it did flag up one issue — the game has a single autosave. And it’s saving constantly, not after checkpoints from what I could tell. So, on the off chance you do manage to insert yourself into a wall, there’s a real danger of losing your entire game. In another area, I managed to fall through the map — but the game popped me back onto land as you might expect, so that’s perfectly fine.
The thing that I like most about Completely Stretchy (apart from the traversal, I love a good “grappling hook” mechanic), is the sense of humour on display at every turn. Almost everyone you speak to has something to say, and most of it is funny. It’s also little touches like an Elektro at the helm of a boat, wearing a captain’s hat — that Elektro could have just been hidden in the cabin, but someone on the development team said “no, let’s give them a hat”.
Honestly, Completely Stretchy is exactly what I thought it would be, and that’s exactly what I wanted it to be. It’ll be a challenge to gather all of the Elektros, I’m sure, but I also need to find some golden objects, too… I’ll be hanging around the Grombie Isles for a bit.
Completely Stretchy (Reviewed on Windows)
This game is great, with minimal or no negatives.
A platformer where jumping isn’t that important, and you can hang onto the outside of a monorail for as long as you like. A nice, cosy time.
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