Have you ever had one of those days where, no matter what you do, everything turns out to be cursed? What if your cursed day turned out to be a total blessing that could be used to help others? Thanks to developers Warp Digital and Dan Ferguson, we can explore this idea in their latest title, ‘Completely Stretchy’, published by Super Rare Originals.

‘Completely Stretchy’ is a first-person exploration-based 3D platformer set in the strange and wonderous Grombi Isles. Starting your day like any other, you arrive at the Elektro factory to continue your work with Dr Grimble, only to have your whole world turned upside down. The mishap at work has left you transformed. You have been turned blue, and your body is now super sticky and left completely stretchy. The setup for this quirky adventure where an accident has left you with superhuman abilities is not unlike many superheroes we’ve seen before. Unravelling the mystery of what happened to you through explorative gameplay will keep you coming back for more.

Players must harness their newfound stretchiness to climb, stick and swing across this bizarre world. Your primary objective is to track down the Elektros that have escaped their containment, restore power to the inhabitants of the Grombi Isles and unravel the mystery of what happened to you. When starting, you can only get one decent swing before you need to touch the ground again to replenish your stickiness. Returning the required amount of Elektros to their containment will award you Bloop, which upgrades the number of swings you can make before needing to touch the ground.

Interacting with fellow Grombi Isle inhabitants and completing various side objectives, including finding lost children, delivering packages without touching the ground, completing time trials and various timing-based puzzles, will award you Elektros, helpful items and the occasional Bloop. While I was a big fan of swinging about the levels like Spiderman and thoroughly enjoyed the parkour and simple control scheme, reaching up to ledges became problematic and made the movement feel clunky.

Sadly, clunky movement wasn’t the only issue I faced during my time with the game. One of the main quests saw my progression grind to a complete halt. Likely due to the quest not updating part of the progression. I completed the rest of the objectives in the quest but sadly could not progress further. Hopefully, the devs can release a patch that will fix these issues.

With my main progress put on hold, I decided to spend the rest of my time helping out the local inhabitants and completing side quests. The time trial and delivery quests helped me to master the parkour mechanics. We all know that I’m not a giant fan of puzzles, but these were pretty fun due to the interactive nature of them. Rather than being overly complicated, the puzzles required more thought regarding timing.

The vibrant colours and cartoony art style are a great fit for this quirky adventure. Each of the three island biomes felt unique and was a joy to explore. I loved the design of the industrial island, this island had a lot of verticality to it and was the most fun to swing around on.

The inhabitants of the Grombi Isles have a zany look that reminds me of something seen in Adventure Time. I noted a great deal of screen tearing especially during moments when I would make a tight turn while swinging from building to building. I also found the options UI to be a little bugged when in the controller settings, the reset defaults button covers the controller sensitivity option, making it impossible to adjust the sensitivity.

The soundtrack fits the explorative vibe of the game and I found it to be quite relaxing for the most part. The audio that plays from various radios around the Islands is so obnoxious it makes you want to pick them up and throw them into oblivion. There is not a lot of variety when it comes to the game sound effects, though sometimes less is more. Grabbing onto surfaces, jumping, and landing give a satisfying squelch that helps sell the stickiness of your character.

‘Completely Stretchy’ is a delightfully odd and quirky adventure that is good-silly-fun. I would love to say that I can highly recommend giving this a play, but in its current state, I am hesitant to do so. I am certain that with more love and some much-needed patches, you’ll have lots of fun getting into some sticky situations. ‘Completely Stretchy’ is available on Steam from the 13th of December 2024.

Written by: Gary Nielsen