In a futuristic world controlled by robots, Reika finds herself imprisoned and awaiting a lifetime of hard labor under the lash of the robots. While waiting in her cell, an unnamed woman, infiltrates the prison, intending to kill Reika for fear that Reika will be the downfall of humanity.
As she fires at Reiji, a robot grabs her and takes her away. Reika has lost her left arm and lays dying in her busted cell. She is soon discovered by Doctor Kouzuki, who grants her an ultimatum: She can either die in her cell, or she can live by allowing herself to be part of his experiment.
With limited options, she accepts his terms, and the doctor affixes a robotic arm in place of the missing left. With it, Doctor Kouzuki requests that Reika explore the factory in order to collect data on the robotic legion.
Giga Wrecker Alt improves on original formula
Game Freaks is a franchise most people know for one reason. However, one thing many do not know about this Pokemon-affiliate is that it also creates and distributes side projects. One of my personal favorites is Drill Dozer for the Game Boy Advance. These are opportunities for the team to branch out and try new things, and, historically, they create quite successful titles.
Giga Wrecker Alt is another one of those successful titles, pairing challenging-yet-accessible puzzling with light Metroidvania to make a very accessible title with just enough challenge to keep things interesting at each turn.
Giga Wrecker Alt includes new things that the original game did not include, the best of which being extra puzzles. One of the best additions is companion robot, Dolma. While it provides some comic relief from time to it, it also assists with offering solutions to puzzles if you’re having trouble. Now, I’m not great with puzzles, and I didn’t have too much trouble with Giga Wrecker Alt. However, on the few occasions where I stumbled on a solution, having Dolma there was quite handy.
In particular, though, the writing in Giga Wrecker is charming at times, dark in others, and funny when it needs to be. It’s a thoughtful game with a focus on world building and puzzling while never going too far.
Another thoughtful aspect is how you interact with enemies. You break bricks throughout the game, but you also destroy robots. You then compile those parts into big boulders that you can use as various weapons and even ways to solve puzzles. Collecting debris is crucial to success.
If the boulder isn’t bigger than the enemy, then you cannot destroy it. So, you have to improvise by breaking parts off the robot or finding a way around. Giga Wrecker uses colors to indicate if you can do damage or not. Bigger enemies glow red if you cannot and blue if your boulder is big enough.
The good greatly outweighs the bad
One of the game’s true strengths is its art direction. Cut scenes are generally painted stills, which hold a vivid yet loose aesthetic that’s just gorgeous. Gameplay-wise, Giga Wrecker Alt is a 2D side-scroller at hard, with beautifully-rendered locales and sprites. At first, when I first moved my character around at the start, movement felt rigid.
However, as more of the game opens up and abilities unlock, fluidity is soon to follow. Animations themselves are just decadent. One of my favorites, apart from the general destruction of cement blocks, is the blade slashing through blocks. They slowly drop off, soon reaching terminal velocity, and that delayed drop is just so satisfying.
On that note, the game’s biggest downfall is more of an occasional one. When certain moving surfaces are moved, they tend to not maintain their natural barriers. This is not a specific example that happened in the game, since most shapes are not simple squares or circles. This is just a hypothetical that represents the issue. Let’s take a U-shaped block, with the opening facing upward, and have it suspended on an arm swinging from the ceiling.
As it’s moving, the walls of the U pivot back and forth as it moves. If you move toward the wall, the wall stops behaving as a wall at some point, and you pass right through it. This often leads to death.
I had several occasions where I passed through an entire block in this manner. It would just be a one-off occurrence, but quite a few puzzles require you to navigate moving platforms like this. So, the risk is there fairly often.
At the same time, Giga Wrecker offers up a way to deal with all mistakes, even like the one previously mentioned. By using time travel warps, Reika travels back to just before starting the puzzle, resetting progress. This allows you to use trial-and-error without much downtime. Sure, all the varied enemies are fun to look at, but having to navigate through zones over and over just to retry puzzles would be cumbersome.
The other point worth mentioning is how limited the skill tree is. Sure, puzzle games don’t really need much in that department, but the vast majority of the few nodes on the skill tree are dedicated to increasing maximum health or health regen.
These nodes make more difference on Hard difficulty, but it’s really the few abilities that make a difference. This side of the game is not deep at all. At the same time, the focus is the core gameplay. So, take this washed point as you will.
Giga Wrecker Alt marries puzzling and Metroidvania beautifully
All in all, though, Giga Wrecker Alt is one of those side projects that really shows what a development team is capable of creating. It’s not technically amazing or game-changing, but there are thoughtful concepts here with clever planning and strong execution. Very little gets in the way, as even the few issues are easily counted by time travel.