Now is the best time to be a fan of Medallion Games' Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines. With its improvements to level design and added mechanics with Luna at the helm, swinging via a grappling hook remains fun yet challenging. Oh, yeah, you can pet BOTH of the Grapple Dogs!
Oh, Grapple Dog, how I have missed ye. Your adorable charm, your silly results screen where I could pet you for being such a good boy, your smooth swinging via a grappling hook. All of it. I’ve missed you. You are unlike any platformer I’ve played because of how well you incorporate swinging and platforming beyond simply running and jumping.
It’s been…a little over two years since I reviewed Grapple Dog on the Nintendo Switch. It earned itself an 8/10 from me due to it being an excellent proof of concept. Its main drawbacks were its difficulty, some movement quirks, and questionable Switch optimization. I played it from start to finish during my review period and loved most of it. There was a part of me that hoped that Medallion Games would expand the Grapple Dog universe and improve on its platforming to make it fully realized.
Now there is a sequel? Consider me thoroughly excited, intrigued, and eager to get reviewing.
Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines takes place immediately following the events of its predecessor. Upon saving the world, Pablo the dog’s journey transcends dimensions and takes him to a world torn asunder by Vyr, a cosmic being who has destroyed the crystals holding the fabric of reality together. Pablo and Luna (new to the series) must save the day with the grapple hooks and powers!
If you haven’t yet played the first Grapple Dog, don’t worry. It’s an excellent proof-of-concept 2D action platformer involving gaining and maintaining momentum through swinging and flying through the air. Think Spiderman, but starring a duo of cute little dogs! The gameplay remains simple in that you jump, bounce, attach the hook to blue blocks, and then swing to greater heights!
Grapple Dogs hits the ground running immediately following the short two-minute (or so) tutorial level. It reminded me how to swing from platform to platform, bounce on enemies, and move throughout the level. The first level introduced a new feature in the Grapple Dog series – Pablo’s elemental powers! Pablo could turn into a lightning ball and travel across grey grids to bridge gaps between platforms.
Most of Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines four (or so…) worlds had a new mechanic baked into the level design. It’s as though Medallion Games had taken players’ feedback into account and opted into fleshing out the game’s mechanics and universe into something fuller-bodied and worth exploring.
With the introduction of Luna, the Grapple Dog series’ cast becomes more well-rounded. She acts as an excellent foil to Pablo, the previous titular protagonist who was equal naive, charming, yet groovy. Luna is far more rebellious, witty, and to the point, often challenging Pablo’s naivete and offering witty retorts. She’s given her own room to grow as a character, too, ensuring that she’s not relegated to becoming a love interest or a character penciled in for the sake of world building. Luna is just as much of a star as Pablo, and I love to see it.
Luna plays slightly differently than Pablo, too. She’s given her own set of levels that are constructed based on her unique abilities. Instead of bouncing, she air dashes and can move upwards (instead of downward). Instead of having Pablo’s special powers, Luna uses a wide arsenal of guns. Her leaf-powered sniper creates leafy ladders when shot at brown walls. Her electric shotgun widens her attacks.
There’s a part of me that’s torn as to how Luna plays within the Grapple Dog series’ momentum-based gameplay. Luna’s arsenal interrupts momentum far more than Pablo’s powers, which feels counterintuitive for much of Luna’s levels. Her air dash can restore some of the flow of a level, but it’s not enough to get back to the “highs” of Grapple Dogs’ momentum.
In the first Grapple Dog, bosses served as a review of mechanics taught to the player in each world. This is typical for a “good” platformer with evolving mechanics – learn something new, use it in increasingly difficult levels, and then show off your mastery when presented with a boss. Grapple Dogs’ bosses deviate from this expectation starting with the second boss. The bosses ramp up in difficulty, occasionally involving bullet hell platforming instead of momentum-based platforming that is heavily focused on the grappling hook. I don’t want to say that I’m disappointed with this approach, but there’s a part of me that would have preferred keeping the momentum and incorporating Grapple Dogs’ new powers and techniques. It just felt jarring to learn something new and then not use it to its fullest extent in a boss battle.
Like its predecessor, Grapple Dogs’ level design is mostly linear while featuring enough space to swing from platform to platform. Higher-speed movement and platforming ends up feeling intuitive and natural because of the space that each level provides. It’s just not the most evident as to how to reach that natural movement, however.
When I think of natural movement within a platformer, I look to Ahr Ech’s Pepper Grinder as a gold-standard example of how to guide the player along a mostly-optimal path while also giving them space to experiment with speed running. It thoughtfully places gems in specific patterns to give a player the sense of where to move to maintain momentum. Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines does not take it that far; hopefully another entry can add some of that handholding, if only to teach players how to hit a good momentum.
I want Medallion Games to take a larger swing in making creative levels that change up the platforming flow. Here’s what I mean by that: There are TWO levels in this game that drastically shifts the aesthetic of the level to be a solid color with white outlines, almost like a bonus world from Super Mario World. These two levels change their layouts every few seconds along with the background music’s beat. Frankly, these levels were my FAVORITE to play because of how much they shook up the look and feel of the rest of the game. It’s clear that Medallion Games is comfortable with experimenting with level design – I want more!
If you’re debating about whether you should get the Nintendo Switch version of Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines, you should know that it has slight performance issues. On levels with multiple lasers on-screen, the framerate would slow to a crawl. The game crashed twice when I was playing as Pablo and I had the leaf ability, too. Hopefully, Medallion Games fixes some of these issues in the future.
I love the Grapple Dog series. Here’s why you should, too. Medallion Games’ approach to innovating 2D platforming through swinging and momentum is worth praising. It’s cliché for me to say that there are moments where Pablo and Luna feel like Spider-Man and Spider-Gwen, but reaching that peak when swinging is exhilarating. The level designs facilitate using the space to climb and swing around without feeling confined to the 2D plane. It’s classic 2D platforming without the random difficulty spikes. It’s fluid, too!
Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is no exception to Medallion Games’ track record of fun retro platforming but with a modern engine and clear design. Swinging and gaining momentum takes a smidge to get used to (just like the previous title, for what it’s worth), but Grapple Dogs is forgiving enough to let the player fail gracefully and improve their platforming mastery bit by bit.
Now is the best time to be a fan of Medallion Games’ Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines. With its improvements to level design and added mechanics with Luna at the helm, swinging via a grappling hook remains fun yet challenging. Oh, yeah, you can pet BOTH of the Grapple Dogs!
