Completely Stretchy Review: Basically First-Person Spider-Man — and That Alone Should Grab You

Completely Stretchy lets you live out your fantasies of being Spider-Man in a first-person puzzle platformer with a quirky premise, and an even quirkier cast of characters. It comes to us from Warp Digital, and sees you play as, well, one of these strange stretchy things. Whatever they are. After a slight mishap at work, you turn all blue and stretchy, which on the one hand is pretty unnerving to the Grombi islands townsfolk. On the other, it allows you to stick to objects and fly about the place. So, swings and roundabouts really.

The majority of Completely Stretchy’s gameplay revolves around traversing one of three different islands. Along the way you’ll collect quests from townsfolk, search for secrets, and hunt down the runaway Elektros. The map’s themselves aren’t very big, but they are densely packed, with someone or something to discover round every corner.

The controls can be a bit tricky to grapple with at first (pun intended); timing and positioning are key to navigating the more complex challenges. Sometimes you will just end up face planting into a wall and having to start again, which can be frustrating, especially in the late game.

At the start you can only use your sticky hand a couple of times, though as you progress the amount of sticks increases, making your sticky-life easier. That’s when things really click into gear, and when you move into the flow the game almost feels like a first-person Spider-Man. But it’s certainly a control system that takes some getting used to, and that flow state is tough to achieve. You may also end up like me and need to go outside for 5 minutes due to motion sickness.

Fortunately the levels themselves are a joy to explore. The blend of art deco buildings with plasticine plants and animals created an environment that’s enjoyable to spend time in. Added to that are the game’s inhabitants. These boggle eyed, multi-limbed creatures may be slightly unsettling at first, but they’re nicely characterised through their interactions and the situations they’ve gotten themselves into.

The quests these characters give you, however, are more of a mixed bag. For every fun traversal gauntlet or mission involving getting shrunken down by a witch and having to fix a spider's legs to get back to normal size, there’s yet another fetch quest involving finding X number of things scattered across the map. It’s a shame, as exploring these maps by yourself can reward you with fun secrets and easter eggs. But being forced to go on your tenth scavenger hunt when you’ve already explored everywhere is a bit disheartening. A little bit more variety in these would have gone a long way.

Completely Stretchy isn’t necessarily a challenging game, but that’s not really what it’s going for. Sure, there are some objectives that require skill and strategy to overcome, but most of the time you’ll gently breeze through things without much trouble. There’s races of various kinds as one example, but calling them races is a misnomer. You can do these time trials at whatever speed takes your fancy, and they’ll still count as completed. 

Instead, the game really leans into its strange premise and general silliness. Whether it be joining in on a protest against the authorities, helping someone who’s learning to swim, or heading down to the discotheque for a good ol’ boogie, Completely Stretchy doesn’t take itself too seriously.

The game does have some minor technical issues; bugs are not infrequent, especially framerate drops and missing or incorrect textures. But the devs have said these things will be patched, which will hopefully smooth out the experience.

It’s not a long game by any stretch (again, pun intended). I completed the main campaign in about 4 hours, and I suspect doing everything including side quests would take between 5 and 6 hours. But as a nice digestible bit of fun, with some original ideas and a lax attitude to personal safety, it may be worth a look. Just make sure you’ve got an anti-sickness tablet to hand.