In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a Steam review for every game in my library (#476 out of 633)... it's time for Verlet Swing.

Verlet Swing a game about swinging around on a grappling hook. It's pretty simple to play and describe, but trust me: you would not believe how much text I've had to delete from this review simply because, even to my eyes, it was "too much." So, right: a grappling hook game. Sounds pretty awesome, right? Swinging from ropes has been a highlight of the Zelda series for nearly three decades, and the fundamental mechanic has proved more than sufficient to justify an entire series of successful (some more than others) Spider-Man games (also going back decades). It's a tried-and-true mechanic with broad appeal. It's also one of my favorite things in the world.

In Verlet Swing, you operate from a first-person perspective, firing your grappling hook at terrain (and occassionally glowing orbs) to latch on to, and swing through small levels populated with lots of obstacles, quickly maneuvering yourself through the playground to reach the "finish line" (another glowing orb) as quickly and efficiently as possible. Your progress is timed, so the essential goal is to swing through the environment and be done with the level as quickly as possible—an optimal run typically concludes in less than 10 seconds.

That's all Verlet Swing is, and all it tries to be. It's a fast-paced, twitchy puzzle-racing game with a unique traversal mechanic. It's not very ambitious, and as a result, it accomplishes everything it sets out to do perfectly: the swinging mechanics have excellent game feel (soaring around on a rope feels just as good here as in the recent, much more expensively-produced Marvel's Spider-Man on PS4) and support for community-created levels ensures an effectively infinite supply of levels to Tarzan your way through. There are some issues with the core mechanics (targeting terrain objects to grapple onto can be frustratingly imprecise) but for the most part everything works out very well.

But each level feels the same. You're constantly being restricted—by the timer, by the terrain, by the instant-fail states (essentially if you touch anything other than the goal, you fail the level and have to start over). The core appeal of the grappling hook concept, to me, is that you have the freedom of flight but are still hamstrung by certain physical limitations. It can be incredibly fun to balance the two—fighting against gravity for those few moments of bliss when you soar into the sky, slowing to an eventual stop as gravity takes hold and inevitably drags you back down to earth. That Spider-Man game I mentioned earlier? I routinely load it up on my PS4, just to swing around the city. It's an almost meditative, transcendental experience—and one I'd love to see replicated on PC.

And who knows? Maybe one day a game will arrive that does just that. But Verlet Swing is not that game. The fundamental mechanics here are incredibly satisfying—the "game feel" present in this small indie game is almost identical to that of Marvel's big-budget offering—but the scope and scale of the levels is just too small and too limiting.

Verlet Swing is capable of recapturing, at a visceral level, the joy of being a child and swinging around on ropes. But such moments are all-too brief. At its heart, Verlet Swing is less of a grappling hook game with puzzles in it than it is a puzzle game with grappling hook mechanics. I'd hoped for the latter, and I still do. Verlet Swing is an excellent physics-based action puzzle game, but I'd hoped for more. I still do.

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tl;dr The movement is wonderful, the levels flow beautifully, and there's a good handful of content. Don't take this game at face value, it's more than just the weird visuals. If you have any interest in this, definitely pick it up.

So you have spiderman, right? You get to swing all over New York at high speeds and feel awesome while doing it. You can touch the skies, glide on the ground, fling yourself through tight spaces all while feeling like an absolute badass. Take that, add some a e s t h e t i c to the mix, and you have the basic idea of Verlet Swing. This is a game all about swinging through levels and trying to get to the end, all without touching anything . If you were to condense the entire Verlet Swing experience into one sentence, that would be it... but of course it's not that simple. Lets expand on that with a few topics:

The Movement : I'm going to be bold and say that this is the parkour swing em' up version of Super Meat Boy. The controls are sharp, aiming is precise (and for those of us with shakier hands, there are objects in the game that have a more "generous" hitbox) and your character's hitbox is small enough to fit you through some tight spaces allowing for some maneuvers and shortcuts you'd normally think would be impossible. Think of it like those polished aluminum foil balls. They took a unique idea, shaped it, polished it, and sanded it down to give it the best look and feel impossibly good. If you recall my earlier statement of feeling like a badass swinging as spiderman, that doesn't even compare to how cool you're going to feel pulling off some stunts in Verlet Swing. I cannot begin to count the times I've thought "Gah, why couldn't I have been recording that???"

The Levels : No spoilers here, don't worry. I'll keep this one basic and let you experience this blind because nothing will top your reaction to the some of the absurdities you're going to see in this game. The levels flow beautifully. Every level has a well defined path and following it just feels really good. Now I know what some of you are thinking. You rebels out there want to stray from the path and see what you can do. Good news for you, that's totally okay and is in fact encouraged. With the incentive of getting the maximum teapots for the level (that's the star rating of this game), you're challenged to find the fastest way through the level, and that typically means finding your own path. I'll admit there are levels where the path to the finish is MUCH harder than using a "shortcut".

Other parts of the game: As you might guess from a game like this, there's a handly dandy level editor packed in with this. If some of the last levels weren't hard enough for you, you can endure the wrath of the community you can enjoy some levels introduced by other players like yourself. What makes the editor great is that it's so intuitive that you can start bringing life to your level ideas within minutes of booting it up because of how intuitive it is. There are a couple of hitbox bugs with reshaping some objects to rediculous proportions, but for the most part it's as clean as it can be. You also have the challenges tab. This contains a series of challenge modes to test your abilities and push you to your limit. Spanning from a mode where you can't use air controls to one where you have to complete the entire game in one run without any deaths, there's a good challenge mode for everyone.

So would I recommend this game? Absolutely. Behind its odd aesthetic lies an irresistably fun movement system accompanied by a great collection of challenging and enjoyable levels. The content is limited only by your drive to swing (and I guess your internet when getting community levels.) Oh, and for the speedrunners out there, times are recorded on the leaderboards so you can rub it in your friend's faces when you beat their times without that awkward face-to-face confrontation. (the leaderboard is togglable for friends and global).

I hope this review helped in deciding whether or not this game is for you. Happy Swinging!

If you have any extra questions, feel free to talk to other players and even the developers here on the Flamebait Games Discord server: discord.gg/flamebaitgames

If your into ᴀᴇsᴛʜᴇᴛɪᴄ / parkour games / synthwave / retrowave you must get this game.
Verlet Swing is pure bliss, gorgeous graphics, top notch gameplay, simple easy to pick up but hard to master.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAZ-EcOU9wc

Now it just need vr support, some kind of multiplayer if possible and a bigger community for endless levels of enjoyment.

I'm so glad i found this game out, highly recommanded.
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i came for the a e s t h e t i c
i stayed for the s w i n g

im spider man

The first 4 worlds of the game are pretty fun, they have the vaporwave aesthetic that made me play the game, the swings and high-speed fun gameplay and a lot of ways to get through the levels, it would have made the game kind of short but for 12.49 euros it´s a really good experience and could replay them to relax. The OST really fits and it´s always welcome. There´s not much to talk about this worlds, they are just really good, both in the artistic and playable ways, liked it a lot and made me rush the whole game despite the last world.

But, then they did world #5, they just tried to make the game hard, and the mechanics ain´t polished enough, this worlds just makes you realize all of the flaws of their design and mechanics.

So the game, a chill, fun, fast-paced, vaporwave which you just, play without really trying to master any mechanic since it´s not necessary at all turns into a stretch, boring, doom-like aesthetically and not nearly as detailed as the rest of the rest of the worlds. This world reveals the game flaws, such as their "shoot-swing hitboxes" that will make you hang on the wrong spots, this flaw is accompanied by the next flaw: how the hang-spots are designed, you will, several times, hang on the wrong spot even if there are just two spots in your screen, since one is behind and slightly to the side from the other. This isn´t the only level design problem, the game really expects you to repeat the level several times, since you just gotta now where is every hang-spot, in really stretch and sometimes almost hidden, slowing down the gameplay and making it really tedious. The next point is how this spots are made to get to every hang-spot in the intended angle, and speed, sometimes with that horizontal swing, this mix makes it just almost impossible to master, since the game is that vertical and the "movement" keys work in such a weird wey makes it almost (completely in my opinion) impossible to master, making you repeat segments of a level that you have completed succesfully several times, as if it was just luck. Basically, this game just tries to be something that doesn´t work due to their mechanics and own nature of the game.

To sum up, this is a great game liked it a lot since the first part is really addictive and fun and the second one even though it get´s really frustrating and unfair challenges me, it could improve a lot, however, I think the game should be split into two different games, adding more levels to the first part and polishing the mechanics, adding more details and improving the level design of the second part.

Forgive my english, hope you find this review useful.

this game makes me want to cry

The controls, the ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃｓ, everything is on point. Feels extremely satisfying. Only problem is that it's a bit short.

Definitely worth the price though.

Spiderman on LSD