Grappling Hook is 50% Off This Weekend

The über-talented Christian Teister of Speedrun Games is having an epic sale this weekend of his cool game, Grappling Hook. Get it this weekend, because Monday it goes back up to the already reasonable price of $19.99.

Matt enjoyed the game and you can read his review if you need some convincing, and you could play the demo.

In other news I started playing Magic and it’s awesome.

- Kyle

Christian casually emailed me and told me about the promotion so good game get! is not receiving any revenue from the game or Christian. As always, GGG! is Ad-Free.

Good Game Get! Grappling Hook

Any gamer that has spent some time with Nintendo’s fabled “Metroid” franchise will be quite familiar with the illustrious grappling hook. SpeedRun Games has taken the concept of first-person puzzle-solving using this device in some intriguing new directions with their new game “Grappling Hook.”

A quick and easy purchase via download, currently available only for PC users but with Mac and Linux versions promised for the near future, “Grappling Hook” is a bit of a rarity in that it is an action-packed first person puzzler, combining elements of platforming, shooting, and exploration in a slick decidedly science fiction-heavy arena. The graphics are clean, attractive and exceptionally well done, and after a short introductory “message” from the supposed creators of the strange puzzle arena, the feeling of being imprisoned in some strange other-dimensional space fortress seems very real. The presence of a subtle and nearly ambient but well-executed electronic soundtrack certainly adds to the experience.

“Grappling Hook” rather gently ushers the new player into an escalating series of challenges with a few simple challenges and check points designed to convey all of the necessary information on how to move, jump, explore, find, and most importantly, escape. These tutorials are a necessary evil in most games, especially those that come without the benefit of a print booklet, but the way these tutorials are integrated into the environment is often tricky. The artificial nature of the “Grappling Hook” world, a series of puzzle arenas in outer space, lends itself well to the conceit of being provided hints and guidance from an invisible technological benefactor, but the execution is another matter and unfortunately the simple floating exclamation marks that the player moves through to trigger, and the basic, almost pop-up windows of text did seem a bit rushed. Occasionally, the actual text itself was strangely hard to understand, such as the line “Stop hooking in flight and fly far” which actually means to release the grappling hook beam while you are being pulled and to let your momentum carry you farther. While this may seem a small point to the casual player, the attention to even these smallest of details can do a great deal to enhance the overall gaming experience.

Aesthetics aside, the vast majority of the puzzle environments are incredibly well done and the challenges ramp up to an almost fiendishly difficult level relatively quickly. Intuitive clues and game mechanics allow even the most novice player to quickly grasp the nature of the goal (escape!) and how to do this. Combining simple keyboard commands that any computer gamer knows well – arrows to move, spacebar to jump, etc. – the player is soon moving through the maze with ease. Looking around is accomplished rather seamlessly through the motion of the mouse, although adapting to using the spacebar and 4 arrow keys with the left hand and a mouse with the right can take some getting used to. This became especially difficult during the platform jumping sequences, requiring me to actually switch hands or leave the mouse and use the keyboard with both. While I was desperately wishing for some better alternative to looking and moving, I’m really not sure what SpeedRun could have done differently here for computer users, most of whom do not have the luxury of playing with a controller or joystick. While movement, jumping, and looking got easier with practice, I was left wondering whetherSpeedRun had tried to fit too much into the control scheme and whether the learning curve might put off some gamers with less time to devote to simply learning how to get through the game areas.

For those with the time and patience to master the control scheme, “Grappling Hook” offers a series of 22 puzzles full of cold silver metal walls, electrified grids, moving blocks, glowing orange bits of code that must be found and “assembled” to activate the escape teleporter, bright green grappling hook targets, towering shafts, dizzying vistas, dazzling starscapes, and vertigo-inducing spaces. It is easy, and wonderfully so, to become almost completely disoriented at times within the game, and this only adds to the maddeningly difficult puzzles the player must try to navigate through. “Grappling Hook” is definitely not a game for the easily discouraged gamer, but like the best of challenges, once the player finally figures out how to work their way through some particularly gnarly sequence of disappearing platforms, electric floors, and cunningly spaced grappling hook targets, the thrill is its own reward.

Perhaps the only real downside to the game is how challenging some of the puzzles can be. A few of the platform jumps require almost impossible timing, and given the nature of the player’s movement – by pressing the arrows on the keyboard – it can be quite frustrating to keep falling from a ledge the player means to jump from instead. Again, the use of a joystick or controller would have mitigated this somewhat, but in a game titled “Grappling Hook,” perhaps there should have been more emphasis on that kind of movement over the kind of precision jumping usually reserved for strict platformers.

All told, “Grappling Hook” is a nicely done, beautiful, and incredibly difficult puzzler that will definitely sate the cravings of the hardcore gaming crowd but may prove a bit too frustrating for the less active gamer. The few rough edges are easily overlooked by those hungry for new challenges and with a little more time and polish, I expect even bigger and better things from future SpeedRun Games releases.

- Matt