Grapple Dog is a game about a dog that gets a grappling hook. That’s it, that’s the game.

The aesthetic is great. Puzzle design is great. Difficulty ramping is . . ok. Music is good but there’s only like five or six tracks it seems.

The problems? It’s probably the Switch port. The game looks like it should be a perfect fit for the Switch, it’s a simple 2d game, but holy crap when you start swingin’ and blocks are exploding and bots are chuckin’ fireballs everywhere, the Switch just barfs. And this is the WORST kind of game to have hitching and lag in, because you’re making twitch aiming decisions midair while you’re moving stupid fast. That makes the overall experience ludicrously frustrating.

It gets further compounded because the complexity of game screens goes way up as the game goes on. More sprites, more tricky jumps, more explosions, and if you swing around too fast the game chugs. It got to the point that for the last two episodes I just couldn’t hang and had to turn on the accessibility options because the game is stingy as hell with health powerups as you’re going through. And that was after several overly-long levels of increasingly hard stuff, where I was getting ready to quit.

I don’t know if I can recommend it based on the level of issues I had. I was basically hate-playing it at the end, and do not wish that on anyone.