I wanna get into it! Again!

Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is the follow-up to 2022’s Grapple Dog. The story picks up where the first game ended, with protagonist Pablo being recruited to save the world using his excellent grappling skills. This time, we meet a new character, Luna, who is playable alongside Pablo.

The grappling hook-focused platformer gameplay is back as well, where your speed and agility depend on your ability to swing to build up momentum.

You might see the bright colours, high-resolution pixel art, and lively energy, then remark, “this is like those Flash games Nitrome used to make!” That’s what I thought as well when I discovered the previous game in the series, Grapple Dog. It turns out that the main developer, Joseph Gribbin, used to work for Nitrome, so that makes sense!

Top dog theming

Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is a little more serious in tone but is still overall a simple, light-hearted 2D platformer story. This time around, the story gets bigger and the stakes get higher. There are more high-resolution cuscenes, they’re more elaborate, and they’re sometimes even animated. Pablo joins the fight against a multiversal threat, right after the ending of the first game and an off-screen wardrobe update.

I appreciate the more imaginative level theming this game presents. The first game relied on safer concepts for level themes — you know, beach, ice, forest, those kinds of themes. The elemental abilities introduced in this game made me expect more of the same for Cosmic Canines, but that pleasantly turns out not to be the case. You get to visit places like a futuristic monkey world, a noir cat world, and a frog dictatorship world.

Instead of having only one of these settings for each chapter, Cosmic Canines goes for variety. This is a multiverse we’re saving, after all! Each chapter features multiple worlds, which sometimes reoccur between chapters.

Hanging with Luna

The most obvious addition to this game is Luna, a new playable character and the deuteragonist of the story. She and Pablo begrudgingly meet after they both respond to the call to protect the multiverse. The game has you playing as both characters in an even split, with half of the levels for Pablo and half for Luna. Like Pablo, she is indeed a dog and has a grappling hook, but otherwise has different abilities. And also a gun.

Luna introduces shooting gameplay to the Grapple Dog formula, with free 360° aiming. I find her controls more complex than Pablo’s because her gameplay involves aiming and shooting in addition to grappling. Her levels also have a greater focus on combat and precision platforming compared to Pablo’s, which focus more on swinging and maintaining speed. It sometimes feels like she only grapples as a commitment to the title of the game.

Luna also marks the first time I’ve ever decided to play a game by alternating between a controller and keyboard/mouse! Pablo’s controls are exactly what I was used to from the first game, so I stuck to playing as him with a controller. In contrast, I found platforming and aiming at the same time to be easier with a keyboard and mouse, so I use those when I play Luna’s levels.

Introducing Luna as another protagonist gives the game the opportunity to have more character interactions that are more substantial. There wasn’t too much for Pablo to talk about in the first game. We even get a bit of character development for both protagonists in an otherwise straightforward, light story.

Swing to this beat

The soundtrack of the first game was great and that continues to this game. We can thank Queenjazz for this, who returned to make the soundtrack for Cosmic Canines, this time accompanied by WangleLine and HYPHA. I’m fond of the funky, sample-heavy style, which reminds me of the soundtrack of Jet Set Radio.

I actually discovered the first game, Grapple Dog, through Queenjazz. I found her in the music credits of Hypnospace Outlaw, looked up what other music she’s made, and saw the soundtrack of Grapple Dog there.

Sequel hooked

As a sequel, Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines grapples with the same kinds of things that challenge all sequels. In its case, rather than being just a pack of additional levels, it chooses to expand on the mechanics of the first game and ramp up the difficulty faster. However, it still has to devote teaching time for the players who didn’t play the first game.

Compared to the first game, there’s less of a focus on pure grappling hook platforming, like needing to build up really fast jumps and swings or testing your agility with tricky grapple point placements. Grappling is obviously still around and critical to the game, but the levels devote more of their “difficulty budgets” on challenging you with the newly introduced abilities. For example, Luna has a very long dash in the place of Pablo’s ground pound. Her levels, then, have a lot of large gaps to cross or walls of hazards to dodge using that dash.

With this expanded story and scope, I see parallels with Portal 2’s position as a sequel to Portal. Like with Portal 2, Cosmic Canines is a bigger adventure with more to do, but as a result, it loses some of the simplicity and purity of the first game. It does make callbacks to its history, with some mechanics from the first game reappearing, but each of those only reappear once. Overall, though, I don’t see this as such a tragedy: there’s more to enjoy in Cosmic Canines than in the first Grapple Dog. Nothing from the first game is really gone in the move to this one.

One thing I did notice as a Grapple Dog veteran is that this game feels easier overall. Time trial and bonus level requirements seem to be a lot more forgiving than the previous game. Additionally, you had only four hit points in the first game, but that’s now upgradeable to eight, which lets you play a lot more recklessly. This doubled health is especially handy for getting fast times in the time trials. Why navigate around the spikes when you can just eat the damage and jump through to the other side in half the time? It was really only in the post-game levels where I felt the pressure to be careful with my health.

It’s hard for me to tell if this game feels easier because I already had a lot of experience from the first game or because this game really is less difficult. The frist Grapple Dog did get some criticism for being too hard, so Cosmic Canines could have been designed in response to that.

Also, there’s a level editor! I’m not much of a level designer, but it’s cool that I can have even more Grapple Dog to play.

Finish line

Just completing the campaign doesn’t take too long. A basic run will get you to the weak ending, which has a cliffhanger and some incomplete character development. If you want the good ending, though, you’ll have to be more thorough in collecting items and getting good times in the campaign levels. That will unlock a series of post-game levels called the Trials of Egress. These levels are especially lengthy and difficult and will demand a deeper understanding of the game’s mechanics.

And there’s still more! There are secrets all over the game that you can only access by cleverly using game mechanics in ways the game otherwise never tests you on. You’ll need to figure those out for 100% completion.

And yes, you can pet the dogs.