Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines Review

Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines is an awesome challenging platformer that has 1 missable achievement. It has accessibility features to make the game easier, like an infinite amount of jumps and no damage from monsters/bosses.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 11h+
Estimated achievement difficulty: 3/10 with accibility options, 9/10 without accesibility options
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: You don’t need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, defeating the end boss without buying any health upgrade is missable
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: Yes, you have to get the gold medal in the time trials for every level and challenge
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No, you can play with the accessibility options on and still unlock all the achievements
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

In Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines you play as one of 2 dogs and will move around in the levels by jumping and slinging around with your grappling hook. You don’t have to have played the first game to enjoy the second one. There are just a few throwbacks to the first game. However, it has quite a lot of improvements over the first game. Using your grappling hook is a bit easier and there is a second character with a different skill set. The level determines if you will play as Grappling Dog or Luna.

I loved the variation in the different levels and weird challenges. Also, there was a big variation in the aesthetics of the levels. The game also comes with a bunch of QoL features, the most noticeable one for me is the option to jump into a level from the level menu section in which you can also see what you’re still missing in each level and then instantly jump to that level. no worries about getting to that different area of the game and finding the right level. Shopping also happens from a menu and not having to physically move toward a shop.

Next to normal platformer levels, there are also short challenges. You open up those levels by using fruits you collect through the levels. You can also use this currency to buy more health (warning this locks you out of an achievement), different color clothes, or a different-looking grappling hook.

Speaking about the achievements. There are achievements for completing all the levels. Find all the gems and find a hidden band in each normal platformer level. There are also achievements for buying all the cosmetics. There is 1 achievement for beating the end boss without any health upgrade. There is an accessibility option to not lose health, which makes this achievement so much easier but without it, this seems really challenging.

Another achievement requires you to get the gold medal on each level. This is also really challenging if you don’t use the accessibility options. However, another accessibility option there is is infinite jumping. This makes these challenges so much more doable but can still be a challenge. I think you need this ability in most levels to find the band, as it seems in 95% of the cases very high somewhere in the level, but in a few levels, it is very low in the level.

And last but not least there is an achievement for having the game on progress at 100%. This includes all bands, gold medals, gems but also all the different cosmetics. If you don’t have enough fruit to buy it all when you finish the rest: I recommend the monkey level in the second world. Above the first checkpoint, there are 18 fruits. After collecting those you can restart from that checkpoint and they are there again. To earn those fruits you will have to complete the level, so don’t leave the level after farming those but just complete it.

I give Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines 4 out of 5 stars.

This review for Grapple Dogs: Cosmic Canines was written on 12 September 2024, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 35 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.