Grapple Force Rena is a 2018 Action Platformer Kickstarter game created by Tim Ashley Jenkins as GalaxyTrail's second game while Freedom Planet's sequel was still under development. GFR had no connections to the Freedom Planet series though, to go as far as to have a completely different cast for the game, which deterred a bit of Freedom Planet fans from playing the game, but due to the game being tied to GalaxyTrail, the game was perfect comfort food for the fans instead of playing the Dragon Valley demo of FP2. Petal Crash, another game made by Tim Ashley Jenkins would eventually release 2 years after Grapple Force to also be made under the development from Freedom Planet 2, but that game didn't catch that much attention outside of those that'd played Grapple Force, and fans that are into Action Puzzles like Puyo Puyo, Tetris, Panel De Pon, and such. I remember learning about this game during this exact time period, and while I won't discuss the person whose gifted it to me for personal reasons, I have played through 3/4ths of the game before dropping out, and on October 15th 2024, I have decided to replay the entire game over again for me to find out why I loved playing this game back when it released, and for the sake of distributing my thoughts to you guys, and further beyond.
Story
Before the game kicks off, a mysterious guy named Lueh shows up and grabs six cool items from his world, called bound artifacts, and brings them into the game's universe. These artifacts have two main things going for them: each one has a unique ability, and they only work for the first person who finds them. One of these items is the Hollow Forge, a massive machine that can spawn hollows—emotionless minions that will follow any order without question. Lueh hands it over to a scientist named Artificer Joules, telling him he can study the machine as long as he makes hollows for him. The hollows can take on all sorts of forms and are mostly used for fighting. The other artifacts are scattered around the game world for the people in this game's world to discover. One of those players being a rich mercenary named Cesar, who stumbles upon the Portal Gloves, which let him open portals between different spots in space. Then there's Hurgh, a tough guy who finds the Arm Cannon, a weapon that fires huge energy balls that explode on impact. Lueh catches wind of these guys and reaches out to them, offering them endless armies of hollows to help them take over their towns. Both of them jump at the chance. Lueh keeps the whole hollows' origin thing a secret from them and doesn’t let Joules in on what he’s really using the hollows for.
Eventually, Joules accidentally creates a hollow that's totally different from the rest: Arlet. Unlike the other creatures from the forge, Arlet actually has a built in personality, similar to the average human. Joules is pretty blown away that the forge could make something like him, but for some reason, he either can't or just doesn't try to make another one like Arlet. Still, he ends up loving Arlet like a son. It's not clear if he ever informs Lueh about Arlet's creation. Meanwhile, as more hollows pop up, some cool artifacts are discovered. A high-ranking captain from the Capital City Guard, Jette, finds these awesome Booster Wings that let them fly, In the Fairy Forest, Prince Arc (which might be one of the best charcaters in the game personally speaking) stumbles upon the Royal Sword, which has this wicked red aura and can shoot energy at targets. And last but not least, a girl named Rena, who lives in the same village as Hurgh, finds the Grapple Bracelets, which let her grab onto anything she wants, and after mesing around with them, she uses them for literally evrything and then proclaims herself to be the hero of her little village.
This is when the game actually begins as Commander Hugh starts sending his soldiers to the same village to take complete control of it, making him the strongest warrior, but of course, Rena wouldn't allow that on her watch, so she goes out of her way to defeat the hollows wihtin the village to eventually meet up with Jette to stop Hurgh himself, only for the former to be immediately shot and renderred useless for a moment. Hurgh eventually gets defeated and Jette recovers to inform Rena that their wings and her grapple bracelets might be linked and she needs to sek to the Glass Caverns for more into. As they retreat, Lueh is out of the scene the top saying that his "plan" is coming together.
When Rena finally gets to the Glass Caverns, she bumps into Magus Pine, this super skilled Mage who's trying to track down the source of the hollows. She's battling a bunch of them right at the cave entrance, and Rena is totally impressed by how well Pine fights. She offers to team up, but Pine shoots her down, saying she’s too young and should head home. Pine then takes off, but Rena isn’t having it—she’s determined to show Pine she can hold her own. As Rena makes her way deeper into the caverns, she runs into Pine again and insists that she should join her. Pine is surprised Rena made it this far and asks how she caught up. Rena explains about her Grapple Bracelets, which only work for her, and Pine realizes Rena has a bound artifact. She tells Rena to hand it over, but Rena refuses, and they end up fighting With Rena obiviously winning at the very end of things. Lueh shows up again next to them and tells Rena she should be proud of her win, but then he pressures her to finish Pine off. Rena stands her ground, saying she won’t kill another hero, and demands to know who Lueh is and what he’s up to. Lueh just says they’ll see eye-to-eye soon and tells her to head to Mesa Town. Pine wakes up and apologizes to Rena for doubting her. She explains that she’s been tracking Lueh for a while and is convinced he’s behind the hollows’ attacks. She asks Rena to team up with her to figure out where the hollows are coming from, and Rena happily agrees. So, they set off for Mesa Town as a short team.
When Rena and Pine roll up to this little hut outside Mesa Town, they bump into Cesar while he's chatting with one of the locals. Rena, not holding back, tries to throw one of Cesar's hollows at him, but he just opens a portal and sends it flying right at Pine instead, showing off his powers. He gives them a hard time, saying they should come to Mesa Town if they want to get embarrassed again. Showing signs that I also might've developed another favorite enemy inside of a game. Not long after, Rena and Pine hit up Mesa Town, only to find it's totally overrun by hollows. They jump into action and manage to clear the place out. Cesar shows up eventually stunned to see his hollow army has vanished. Then Lueh pops in and asks Cesar if he needs more minions and how his "business" is going. Cesar fills him in on Rena and Pine, and Lueh laughs, saying they’re just troublemakers who love to mess things up for guys like them. Pine decides to stick around Mesa Town for a bit to keep an eye on the locals in case more hollows show up, while Rena heads over to Cesar's tower to take him on.
Once Rena makes it to the top of the tower, she and Cesar go at it, and she ends up winning. Just after she takes him down, Lueh shows up and starts gloating about how he knew she’d win and how his "master plan" is going perfectly. He mocks Rena, saying she won’t have the guts to finish off Cesar, so he decides to do it himself with this giant yellow hand. But Rena swoops in just in time to save Cesar. That’s when he "drops a bombshell", revealing he was the one who brought those bound artifacts to Rena's world, which shocks her, but after his ~~2nd to final~~ visit, Cesar gets back up and tells Rena to give up on saving the world because justice doesn’t always win, but she’s not having any of that. Then she gets a message from Pine through a magic spell. Pine tells her that Lueh’s hideout is in an old tower in the Fairy Forest, a place where humans aren’t allowed. Rena rushes off to the forest to find Lueh and put an end to his plans for good. Little does she know, Cesar is tailing her, looking for revenge on Lueh for trying to take him out.
When Rena shows up at the Fairy Forest, a couple of fairies spot her right away and rush to tell Prince Arc. Already starting hot, he’s not happy to see her and warns her that she’s just going to cause problems, especially since the fairies are already dealing with a hollow infestation. He pulls out his Royal Sword, which only he can use, and Rena quickly figures out it’s a bound artifact. When she doesn’t take the hint and leave, he tells the fairies to attack her, so now she’s got to fight off both the fairies and the hollows. Just another morning for Rena, but this element will remain until the very end. Eventually, Rena makes it to this old tower and realizes she has to climb to the top to find Lueh. Just as she’s about to start climbing, Cesar shows up and offers to help her get there using his portals. Rena is hesitant at first since he admits he’s only helping to get back at Lueh, but when he points out that it’ll be way harder for her to climb without his help, she decides to take him up on it. Once Rena reaches the top, she finds Lueh again, who says he knew she’d come for him. Just as she’s about to confront him, Prince Arc shows up and is shocked to see Lueh there. Rena tries to explain that Lueh is behind the hollows, but Lueh tricks Arc into thinking they’ve been teaming up to cause chaos. Arc gets furious and pulls out his Royal Sword, ready to fight them both. Just as he’s about to strike, Lueh creates this huge yellow fist and punches him into the wall. If you thought that you're getting a battle form the card in the menu, turns out you're wrong. (I wished that they've updated the game to have him as a funny superboss but nope!)
Rena is surprised that Lueh didn’t make her fight him like he did with Pine and Cesar, and Lueh just smirks, saying he’s not as predictable as she thought. Suddenly, these big magenta cubes start popping up out of nowhere, and Lueh starts to panic, which makes Rena realize this wasn’t part of his plan. Then, a giant laser shoots out and hits Lueh, which fucking kills him, I'm just going to say it now. Rena gets a magic message from Pine, who’s at the bottom of the tower and worried about all the cubes surrounding it. Rena starts to freak out, saying she has no idea what’s going on, and Pine tells her to hurry back down before more cubes show up. When Rena finally makes it to the bottom, she finds Pine, and they manage to escape together. Cesar and the fairies also make it out of the forest safely, although you don't actually see this in-game. And now.. Here's the most confusing part of the game that I had to rely on the [Wiki](https://antifandom.com/galaxytrail/wiki/Grapple_Force_Rena) for me to clarify and say it within my own words. So, without further ado...
Word of the hallows started to dissapear, and eventually, the Archamage sends a message from the capital city stating that the Fairy Forest Disaster was somewhat related to the discoevry of the bound artifacts and due to this, she sent a search, *using hollows* to find any chosen one to have them basically kidnapped. Same thing goes for magic users as she deems them "unlicensed" to seethe in the use of magic. The Archmage wraps up her announcement by saying that back in the day, people looked to the Creators for guidance. But since the Creators have been quiet for hundreds of years, everyone has turned to the Archmage for wisdom and support instead.
After Lueh's death and the Fairy Forest Disaster, Artificer Joules is still deep into his research on the Hollow Forge. He’s figured out what Lueh was up to with the hollows he made, and now that Lueh's gone for good due to an unfourtanate cause, he’s not interested in making them for anyone else. But things take a turn when the Capital City forces find his hideout and demand he whip up more hollows. When he says no, they kidnap his son, Arlet, and threaten to kill him if Joules doesn’t comply. With his son taken and being forced to work for the Archmage, Joules gets more and more bitter as the days drag on without Arlet. Once the hollows are ready, the Capital calls them "special enforcers" and sends them out to track down some artifacts and the people connected to them. Meanwhile, Rena is staying under the radar, avoiding capture by not using her Grapple Bracelets. But when she realizes the "special enforcers" are just hollows, she decides to dig deeper and find out who’s really behind the hollow army.
Rena hears about a mysterious door in Solstice Yard from a girl named Paiya and goes to check it out. When she manages to open the door, she finds Arlet, who’s super relieved to be out of his prison. He tells Rena that his dad is being held where the hollows are made. Rena asks where that is so she can stop the hollow production and save Arlet’s dad, and he leads her there. Arlet stays outside because the hollow lab freaks him out. Inside, Rena sees a hologram of Joules and thinks he’s the one holding Arlet’s dad hostage, not realizing that Joules is actually Arlet’s father. As she goes deeper into the lab, she finally meets Joules in person, and he explains his work to her. Then, he traps Rena in a glass container that keeps her from moving and knocks her out, grumbling about how unpleasant his job is.
Meanwhile, Arlet starts to worry when Rena doesn’t come out of the lab, so he reaches out to Pine, who’s also been trying to find her. Arlet shows Pine where Rena went in, and Pine jumps in, telling Arlet to stay put. When Pine finds Joules, she demands to know where Rena is. Joules, noticing Pine doesn’t have a bound artifact, tells her to leave. When Pine threatens him if he doesn’t let Rena go, Joules decides to test his research by using his copied artifacts to fight her. Even with the power of the copies, Joules still loses. After the fight, he claims he got a lot of useful data but says he has no more use for Pine now that the research is done. He then cranks up the Hollow Forge to create an endless army of hollows, knowing Pine won’t stand a chance against them. Just when things are looking bad for Pine, Arlet swoops in and tells them to stop fighting. He flies up on his yellow wings and blasts the Hollow Forge with a powerful laser, destroying it and showing off his true power. Arlet then reassures Joules that he’s okay and that he doesn’t have to do the Archmage’s dirty work anymore before rushing over for a hug. Joules explains to Pine that Arlet is his son and why he kidnapped the users of the bound artifacts. He then frees all the prisoners and shares his reasons for what he did. After hearing about the Archmage’s actions, Rena, Pine, Jette, Cesar, Hurgh, and Prince Arc decide to head to the Capital to confront her directly, while Joules and Arlet stay behind since Arlet hates fighting.
So, the six of them roll into Capital City, but bummer for them, the Archmage got tipped off about their escape and readies them with a bunch of hollows and city guards (which in the context of the gameplay, might just be the weakest guards of a video game that I have ever seen). They manage to take down them, and Jette finds Rena to see how she’s holding up. Just as they reunite, the Archmage makes a big announcement that she’s sending out the Capital airship. Jette takes Rena to the ship so she can blow it up from the inside. When Rena gets to the core, she discovers that General Grimsleigh, someone Jette knows, is piloting the airship. After Rena destroys the core, Grimsleigh tells her to bail before the ship goes down because he plans to go down with it. But Rena, with all of the other characters doesn't let death happen upon any human in her sight, taking him up and takes him to Jette, who flies them both out of there. Jette tells Rena they think they’re done, and even though the public won’t know what the Archmage did, it’s cool because her plan halted for now. This shocks Rena and insists that justice needs to happen and the Archmage has to confess. Jette tries to talk her out of it, but when she sees Rena won’t budge, they head to the Archmage’s palace. After one more of the same thing with Pine at the final stage, we finally get to see the Archmage in person to immediately inform Rena about the Alter next to her, saying it was used by past Archmages to talk to the Creators, who are like the supposed gods of the world. Rena calls her out for using the Fairy Forest Disaster to grab power, and the Archmage claims she’s just trying to keep peace after the Fairy Forest got wrecked and that she needs power to rule properly. Rena tells her she doesn’t want to fight, she just wants the Archmage to admit her wrongs. The Archmage, however, says she’s not backing down and will kill Rena if that’s what it takes to keep order. They end up fighting, and after what feels like a long dragged out fight coupled with some of the best sounding music composed by a familiar person (will explain more down the road), Rena successfully takes out her, with some of the glitcehd cubes from the Fairy Forest Disaster ravaging the place too. But guess what? The Archmage does something, and basically "resets the fight" with the memories still being retained, to then just drop the excuse of the Creators not being silent, but they were rather absent.. She continues and states that the Creators have abandoned the people of the world long ago if had ever even existed. The Archmage apologizes to Rena for believing that she deserved the kind of power that she claimed to have and offers to pardon Rena and her friends. She then sends Rena home via teleportation.
This questions Rena, because basically, everything that she went through was pointless, and it really is. But Rena's mother exclaims to her after talking to some of the backer NPCs (calling this for later) that she can do anything but not everything and she could receive some rest. The game ends showing morem info through show and tell regarding how the characters are doing, but after working on the story for this game, I am tired and need to rest myself.
Gameplay
Grapple Force Rena can be best described as if Spiderman meets Mischief Makers, but for me to not have neither experience with both of those franchises, GFR had a completely new identity to my liking, and I kinda like it. As you play as Rena (and Pine at the later portions of the game), you primarily control the game by running, jumping, and using your grappling bracelets which can cling you onto walls, moving from one area to another, and grappling enemies/objects to then throw at other enemies. Although most of the time, you're going to be using the grappling powers as a weapon and as a traversing tool though because in certain cases where you're feeling like you're doing things wrong, you're actually doing it right, and I'm honestly not a big fan of this style of gameplay. While it provides a bunch of replay value to the game allowing the user to play the game essentially however they like (with the inclusion of finding cassette tapes that essentially build the soundtrack for users to listen to), it leaves the impressions to some first play (or veteran) users of what I have just described, with the inclusion of making you believe that you have forgotten something important, but you actually didn't.
Within this game, you have a total of six worlds to play, with 5 stages each of them, making this a relatively short game if you know what you're doing, and in terms of the complexity between the stages and how the bosses work and such, they're a lot on the easy side, with stages almost lasting around 10 minutes or less. Even less if you're speedrunning the game. The bosses--too--aren't a trouble either; it's only up to Cesar when the bosses actually start to become a challenge, with the Arcimage being a little bit of a learning curve and confusing to fight. Thankfully, this game allows you to restart a boss at any given time instead of dying at the very last moment, and for a total of around 8 times I have had to do it exclusively towards the final boss because while I knew the objective with how to beat it, The Arcimage's attacks are unorthodox, leaving me with an impression that some of the attacks require hyper reflexes to dodge them because some of them have you believing that you have dodged the attack, but nope--the attack continues to be a burden to your HP. Cesar is second place, but only with 2 times because throughout each and every attempt, since I knew already on how to beat the boss, I was taunting moving at him, but when he gets smarter, I was doing the usual, but getting hurt a lot because I took more enjoyment in taunting him more than actually fighting him. Outside of these bosses, I have defeated almost every mini boss and boss with one try, leaving under the impression that either this game is too easy or everyone in this game's universe is canonically weak, leaving only the impression that Rena is actually the strongest. Now it makes me wished that Prince Arc was a secret boss because while the game will still show you that you have to fight him, you don't ever actually fight him outside of Joules using his sword against you when you fight him as Pine, which doesn't equate to fighting Prince Arc. I want to fight the real deal, not some chill dude doing research that uses the power of not only the best character in the game but all of the other ones, too.
Another thing that I need to discuss is the lack of a sense of a community in this game. Most of the NPCs in Grapple Force Rena are NPCs that the backers have backed enough money to have their concepts of them to be put inside of the game, and to eventually learn in the credits that pretty much **everyone** within the NPC group derived from somebody's creation is a bit sad considering that there could've been a lot more potential with the general environment of this game. In fact, there is, but that's in the form of the fairy place, which to me, is very typical for Jenkins as he is in love with fairies since day one, and it would be a little while before he would make an entire game that has a fairy and another pastel-like aesthetic that is much more simplified. But, why stop there? Why does the fairy enemies of that place be the only diverse species inside of the game? Rena's hometown is just a small area that only has Rena's little group of friends that she likes to hang out with, with the inclusion of 2 other random people, a cat, and Rena's mother. The two random people also being backers of some people.
Graphics
Another game featuring pastel-like graphics, which actually was the inspiration that made me play this game after reviewing Hazelnut Hex. This game has it in the form of pixel art with a ton of dithering in the backgrounds, with the environment and the sprites being simple colors that don't follow the limits of the Sega Genesis. I'm saying this because for the music, and the sound effects sounding all "Genesis"-esy, to me it doesn't feel perfect to be a game that would fit on there. That's all there is to say though, because while I like some of the characters, they aren't too eye catching, but I would still like to know the artist, as per usual with most of my reviews.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for Grapple Force is great. A lot of notable people who’ve worked on the soundtrack I know them from other works; There’s some that worked on like one song, but the notable ones are: Jarad Moloney, Michael Staple, Shan Evans, Will Bowerman, and most importantly for my case, DM DOKURO, which is notable for his works with the Terraria Calamity Mod. He worked on The Devourer of Gods, Roar of the Jungle Dragon, and Stained, Brutal Calamity. Which songs that he worked on within this game? Everything related to The Archimage .. I’m going to upset the entire Calamity fanbase with this statement, but DM DOKURO’s music is mid. His music for Grapple Force is brilliant even if the final boss is like defeating any Zelda boss, but I guess by how his music is composed, most of his music sounds like they all derive from each other, which isn’t too much of a problem, but it does leave out some variety in his music. When I’ve listened to the final boss for Grapple Force, my mind was thinking too much on the Devourer of Gods theme, and it just left me with an impression that his music is nothing but copy and pasted.
Besides that though, the best songs in the game are Tussle Through Town, Exposition Expedition, I’m Your Next Opponent, Memories of some Imagined Place, Steady Pressure, The Hard Way–nearly every song resonates with me positively. GFR stands out as one of the indie games that is not only uniquely inspired in terms of gameplay but also boasts an exceptional soundtrack. Unfortunately, Jenkins does not offer an adequate means to experience the game's soundtrack, a sentiment that similarly applies to his work on Petal Crash. Doesn't mean that the songs are bad though.
Pros
- + Story is very engaging to the player
- + Gameplay is solid
- + Graphics are visually pleasing to the eyes
- + Most of the soundtracks are bangers
Cons
- - Story left off with a bunch of plot holes that never gotten explained
- - Game is too short, with only 5 worlds and 5 stages for each world
- - Game's environment is lacking with it only being the enemies you fight, and Kickstarter backer-made NPCs
7
Gameplay
6
Graphics
7
Story
8
Sound
6
Replayability
7
out of 10
Overall
Grapple Force Rena is a charming yet frustratingly incomplete experience. While its unique gameplay—blending grappling mechanics with platforming flair—and stellar soundtrack from talents like DM DOKURO and others shine as highlights, the game feels like a rough draft of something greater. And while I know this game had been developed for 5 years according to Jenkins himself, unresolved mysteries, like the origins of the random glitching happening or Lueh’s true fate, leave the story dangling and I hope that he is able to return to this game with a sequel, similar to his other slightly more successful game, Petal Crash. Compared to Freedom Planet or even smaller-scale indie hits like Terraria and Dark Witch, it’s clear he had a vision that didn’t fully materialize here.
