Game EXP: Grab the Bottle (NS)

Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of Grab the Bottle from developer Kamina Dimension and publisher Sometimes You last week through Indie Gamer Chick's #IndieSelect event.  The game was received without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and shared via social media channels.  All of the words in this article, unless otherwise noted, were conceived and written by me and are my own thoughts and experiences while playing this game.

As I stared up Grab the Bottle, my expectations for what the game was based on the screenshots I saw on Indie Gamer Chick's Twitter feed were drastically different than what the game turned out to be.  I have not talked about a trace-the-line game Jack Lumber from Owlchemy Labs.  Because the screenshot showed an elongated hand reaching around obstacles grabbing a bottle, I thought that this would be a perfect game for the Switch and that I might finally redeem myself after giving up on Jack Lumber a couple of years back.  So when I was at the menu screen for GtB, I was a little confused as to why there was to touch screen functionality.  So I thought, "Okay, let's see what this game is actually about then.

Instead of tracing a line around objects as I had previously thought, Grab the Bottle is instead a game where a hand reaches out on its own and the player has to turn the hand around objects, often gathering items before finally making their way to the bottle.  There are elements of the Nokia phone game Snake, so your reaching hand cannot cross or touch your already ridiculously long arm.  There are other elements and mechanics that further develop the game beyond my brief description (as you can see below), but that is the basic gist.

As one would expect, the levels become increasingly difficult, adding in more complex obstacles and items (like the pacifier) that require picking up before the bottle can be finally acquired.  And, as the game progresses, so does the age of the player character, the locations also change, as well as the type of bottle being grabbed, from baby bottles, to soda, beer, and others (maybe?  I've only made it to the near end of the teenage soda drinking levels).

And that is where I am at.  Near the end of the soda levels, there is what looks like a magpie (based on the coloring of the bird) that flys off with your bottle.  The subsequent level is a pretty big departure from the previous static levels.  Here, your hand is chasing the bird at high speed, dodging tree branches, other birds, and for whatever reason, balloons.

What makes this stage all the  more difficult, is that if your turns are too wide then the screen passes your hand and you die, starting you back at the beginning.  And unlike previous stages that allow you to hit your hand three times before being pulled back and restarting the level, here a single hit causes you to "die."  There have been a number of posts on Twitter (that I am presently unable to locate) with people having their end screen after they manage to catch the bottle in the above stage showing upwards of 500 deaths/tries.

Now, I can understand and appreciate a jump in difficulty when it comes to boss battles, and this bird chase is essentially that, but this is not so much a jump forward as it is a ballista launch forward.  In past levels I took sometimes die upwards of 20-30 times and here are people needing 500+ tries.  Now, I am in no way saying that a game should be easy enough so that people would be able to beat it (or individual levels), but the problem that I have with this level in particular is how drastically different it is from the rest of the game building up to this point.  Earlier levels focused on being able to plan out your course and you could look at the entire level figuring out what to do before you even extend your hand.  In this level, it is all about dexterity and memorizing what comes at you when.  The comparison I made to Conklederp, is that the earlier levels were like bouldering, being able to plan out your course before you even start.  This bird stage is like parkour when your are moving quickly and have to react fast the environment as it comes at you.

Fly Away Little Bird, Fly Away. . .

I have gone back to the bird level a couple of times since my first exposure to it, but each time I am only able to put in about 10-15 tries before I get too frustrated at my own ineptitude and have to stop.  At that point, for me, the game has become no longer fun, and why am I engaging in something that I do not find fun?  I have a number of games that I do have fun playing and I can honestly say that I have given this one stage enough of my time, sadly to say because I really do love the concept in Grab the Bottle, but I seem to have hit a skill wall that I am unable to find myself able to get over.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental