Completely Stretchy review

As well as there being plenty of gritty and serious games this year, it’s also been a year of gaming that celebrates the sillier side of the hobby. We had the comedy game Thank Goodness You’re Here, a zany experience featuring two rival pie companies in the north of England. Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip was a game all about a daft little fella who wanted to get to space by driving really fast up a big tower. And now we have Completely Stretchy, which revolves around the premise of having a long blue arm that you use to get around.

Our hero didn’t always always have a big blue arm though, in fact at the start of the game their arm is regular in both length and colour. When working for your boss Dr Grimble at the Elektro factory, a routine test goes horribly wrong, and a big explosion causes one of your arms to get all long and wobbly. This freak accident also causes all of the Elektros (little living fuzzy blobs) to escape, and with your new powers you’re tasked with finding them across the three Grombi Isles. It’s a simple enough mission that’ll see you exploring this weird little world and helping it’s weird little residents, in a way that only someone with a flexible arm can.

First though you’re given a chance to test out your new Completely Stretchy powers as you escape the ruins of the lab itself. By clinging on to any surface with your blue hand you can swing around it, and if you use your momentum right when you release your grip you’ll go soaring through the air to your destination. I won’t pretend that this isn’t a little janky and hard to effectively use in some situations, but that’s all part of the charm of the game.

Once you’ve left the lab you’re free to explore the first Grombi island for Elektros at your leisure. With a lovely pastel aesthetic and all sorts of buildings to climb, it’s a whole lot of fun to just swing around this medium sized open area looking for the fuzzy fellas scattered around it. There are also plenty of side quests to be done too though, which involve helping your fellow Grombi with daft tasks.

The first of these I took part in was delivering a package, but for some reason the recipient of this particular package didn’t want it to ever touch the floor. A perfect job for someone with a sticky grappling hook like arm I’m sure you’ll agree. Other of the bizarre and occasionally humanoid folks on the island wants you to help them with factory work by pushing buttons at the right time to work a machine, another needs you to find missing children scattered around the island. It’s all fairly simple stuff that rewards you with a couple of Elektros for your trouble, and is a fun enough way to spend your time.

Once you reach a specific amount of Elektros and return them to the lab you’ll be rewarded with your first arm upgrade, one of a handful of little blobs you’ll get on your adventure that make your arm longer and stickier (which essentially means you can grapple an extra time before plummeting to the ground). You also then gain access to the other two Grombi Isles, one of which is more rural and the other filled with factories. On these islands you’ll find (you guessed it) more fizzy Elektros scattered around and more odd jobs to complete, and the cycle continues.

Completely Stretchy has a fun world where it’s nice to explore and vibe with the locals, and there’s never any danger of really failing anything you do. There’s no fall damage to worry about, tasks rarely feature much of a fail state (or if they do barely punish you for failing), and if that’s too much pressure for you the you can just swing around instead. Maybe you’ll find a hidden little dance club with breakdancing Grombi and banging tunes, or a secret entrance to the bank with a burglary in progress. Wherever you go you’ll likely find something interesting to check out and a collectable or two, so why not just mess about in this cosy world for a few hours.

As much as I enjoyed my time with Completely Stretchy, it has a few issues I encountered while swinging through it. The most annoying of these is the map, which features a tiny marker representing you on it that I always struggled to find no matter what. This is so much more annoying than it sounds I promise. There’s also a mandatory late game mission where you’re tasked with going to various locations around the islands, which without any map markers and only vague descriptions is just a pain. Not all of the tasks are created equal in the game either, and by my third hoverbike race I’d had enough of dealing with the iffy controls.

Completely Stretchy is a charming exploration game with fun movement abilities and a lovely and silly world to explore. Map issues aside it’s a delightful friction free experience that just feels nice to mess around with, and if you need a way to spend a few stress free hours you could do a lot worse.