on Kickstarter on July 28th, 2014, and released for PC through Steam on December 4th, 2018. The demo can be downloaded off the game's website here.Rena is a girl living in a village who owns a pair of magic bracelets that shoot out grappling beams. Life is peaceful in her village until it's invaded by a mysterious automaton army. Now, armed with her bracelets, Rena sets out on a quest to stop the army, and in doing so, comes across a grand conspiracy.
Grapple Force Rena contains examples of:
- Action Bomb: Bomb-shaped mooks, if struck, will retract their legs, shut their visors, and start flashing before they blow up.
- Action Girl: Rena, who beats dozens of automatons and a bunch of bosses. The other playable character, Pine, counts as well.
- all lowercase letters: Paiya in Stage 5-1 talks to Rena this way, combining this with some No Punctuation Period, possibly to show how chill the character is.
- All the Worlds Are a Stage: The final stage contains gimmicks from all previous worlds.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: Pine is playable for one stage and the following boss after Rena is captured.
- Animal Mecha: The largest and strongest robots are shaped like giant ants or crabs.
- Anime Hair: Commander Hurgh has his hair in this fashion.
- Anti-Villain: The Archmage, who was ultimately trying to use the Artifacts in order to commune with the Creators. She abandons that after a fight with Rena, when the altar collapses and overloads the room with its power. This briefly amplifies her farsight and thus proves that the Creators have abandoned the humanity long ago.
- Bait-and-Switch Boss:
- Prince Arc is unceremoniously knocked aside before his supposed boss battle by Lueh, who gets wiped out by The Corruption before his boss battle, and afterwards the whole thing goes Off the Rails.
- One of the last stages is an extended reference to Gunstar Heroes where you take on several crowds of enemies just to find one last mook dramatically dancing on the spot. Unfortunately, there is no actual boss right after him.
- Black Knight: One of the bosses is a pretty stereotypical example with a big sword, dark armor, red crest and an armored horse...that is some kind of automaton with a jet engine in place of its legs, which allows it to hover in mid-air.
- Boring Return Journey: The Playable Epilogue is a repeat of the first stage, now free of hollow soldiers. It ends once Rena greets her mother and goes back home.
- Boss-Arena Idiocy:
- Pine's boss arena has rocks sticking out of the ceiling that can be pulled and tossed on her.
- The same gimmick reappears in World 3 to crush the antlion miniboss.
- Boss Rush: One is unlocked after clearing the story once.
- Brick Joke: Rena owns a prized eggplant statue that she soon finds is not nearly as unique as she thinks. Later on a penguin gifts her one after much suspense much to her dismay, and at the very end the townspeople of her hometown gift her a more unique one with a smile drawn on it so she won't be sad.
- Casino Park: One of the worlds Rena can visit is this. It includes a Pool minigame that Rena can play by throwing Mooks at it.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: All the human bosses cannot be grappled, which is a trait Pine as a playable character loses when she's up against an enemy who owns copies of all the magic artifacts.
- The Corruption: An magenta-colored Ominous Visual Glitch swallows the entire Fairy Forest. It has the honor of killing Lueh and sending the story off-course, but nothing about it is ever explained even when it shows up again at the end.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: The fate of the mecha bosses.
- Doppelgänger Spin: The Archmage is able to create four more clones of herself at some points during the fight, though they are purely there as a distraction.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Lueh is the main antagonist for half of the game. The creator of the artifacts everyone is using, he plans to exploit them all for some kind of plan... and then he gets engulfed by a random beam of The Corruption and is seemingly killed. The rest of the story involves another antagonist taking advantage of the incident to gain power.
- Escort Mission:
- Stage 2-4 involves carrying a penguin to the top of the level. He is invincible and will slash at enemies whether he is on the ground or atop Rena's head.
- Pine is playable during Stage 5-4 and like Rena she must solve lock-and-key puzzles to proceed, but the way it works is that objects are magically dragged behind her up to a short distance, requiring the player to take it slow and mind how they're moving across obstacles to the keys don't get stuck behind walls.
- Expressive Health Bar: Rena and bosses have their facial expression change on their health bar based on their amount of life and if they've been defeated.
- Fast Tunnelling: The first boss is a large ant automaton that has six very sharp blades in place of legs, and so it is able to regularly dive into the ground and instantly dig itself way down and out of Rena's reach, to re-emerge at a different location a few seconds later.
- Game-Breaking Bug: During the fourth part of stage 4-3, the last enemy will be a Action Bomb mook. If it damages Rena upon exploding it will clash with the dialogue box that triggers the next wave of enemies and this will softlock the game most of the time.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The supposed boss battle against Arc is interrupted by an Escape Sequence from the spread of a blocky corruption that kills Lueh with a giant laser beam. Nobody knows where it came from, not Lueh, not even the Archmage. And when it appears to have some kind of relation to the Creators, it turns out those are either gone or might never have existed, so the corruption goes completely unexplained and even undiscussed by the characters despite the impact it has on the plot.
- Halfway Plot Switch: Lueh, the apparent Big Bad, is hijacked and killed by an outwordly force, leading to the introduction of the Archmage into the plot as the new main antagonist.
- Hand Blast: Pine is able to blast magical projectiles from her palm.
- Have You Seen My God?: The Archmage believes herself to be the avatar of the Creators. However, it turns out that they have abandoned humanity long ago, and she gives up on her plans after realizing this.
- Heel–Face Turn: Many of the game's bosses join Rena's side for the finale.
- Helpful Mook: Stage 2-3 requires bringing rocks to weigh down a large switch. As going back and forth several times is bothersome, you might want to bring a few enemies to the switch too. This is even worth an achievement, but is in itself complicated as the foot soldiers will keep attacking and jumping out of the switch as part of their attack pattern.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Averted with Rena, who relies on her bracelets, but played straight with the other playable character, Pine.
- On the flip side, one of the upgraded varieties of the basic automaton happens to wield a sword as well.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- Cesar blocks all direct attacks, and creates portals to throws enemies through at Rena. The only way to beat him is to use his own portals, which leave him open to attack.
- Some bosses must be defeated by grappling their own projectile attack and throwing it back at them.
- Hypocrite: The mage council says that no-one is allowed to use the special items because they're too dangerous, but are later found to be using them to create their own army.
- Just a Kid: Pine treats Rena with disdain throughout World 2, projecting her own past as a reckless kid upon her.
- Justice Will Prevail: Rena believes herself to be a heroine of justice, though every antagonist she faces retorts she's just enforcing Might Makes Right on them.
- Magical Accessory: Rena's bracelets shoot magic grappling beams.
- Mecha-Mooks: Nearly all of Rena's opponents are various kinds of automatons, though they are still led by the humans like Commander Hurgh.
- Mechanical Horse: The Dark Knight boss rides one that has a vertical-takeoff jet engine in place of legs.
- Palette Swap:
- The basic automaton types go through quite a few color changes as the game progresses and stronger varieties appear, often alongside the unupgraded ones in order to highlight the contrast.
- Beating the game unlocks palette swapping for Rena.
- Pinball Zone: One of the levels takes place inside something very similar to a giant pinball machine, complete with chutes and bumpers.
- Playable Epilogue: After winning the game, Rena can explore her hometown and talk to the people there.
- Puzzle Boss: The bosses are typically immune to Rena's grapple beam and she has no other direct means of attack, so either they or their arena will make it possible to toss something in some particular way to deal damage to them.
- Save the Villain:
- Lueh pressures Rena into killing Cesar and then decides to crush him when she doesn't, but Rena pulls Cesar out of the way.
- Grimsleigh admits defeat to Rena and declares they plans to go down with their battleship. She drags them away in a hurry.
- Rena ends up saving the Archmage after their battle ends with an altar collapsing and taking much of the area down with it. It works, as she then sees the error of her ways.
- Shout-Out: The casino stage has the "COPE" signs from Spring Yard Zone in its background.
- Shut Up, Kirk!: The Archmage ends up giving one to Rena, accusing her of being naive.You tell me that we do not have to fight, yet your intent is clear. You have come to face me as a hero would a villain. Your idea of righteousness leaves no room for reason or compromises. It brings me no pleasure, child, but your interference has caused far too much damage already. Order must be maintained at all costs!
- Technicolor Magic: The Archmage wears exclusively purple robes, and some of her magic projectiles are purple as well.
- Tempting Fate: The game begins with a side character named Jarvis loudly declaring that it's "another day of nothing happening as usual." Cue a massive automaton showing up next to him immediately afterwards. He is shocked at the dramatic irony, but still keeps enough of his wits to dodge an automaton's punch and get the hell out to alert Rena.
- Tennis Boss: The ant automaton will regularly grab solid chunks of earth to toss at Rena, but she is able to stop them mid-flight with her bracelets, then toss them back at it.
- The Unfought: Arc and Lueh are set up to be bosses but are never fought due to the Bait-and-Switch Boss moment listed above.
- Thinking Up Portals: Cesar uses portals to teleport around and to reflect any projectiles tossed at him. Naturally, he can only be defeated because he leaves portals Rena can exploit by tossing a Mook on one end to hit Cesar on the other side.
- Throw the Mook at Them: Rena can use her grapple to grab enemies and throw them at other enemies. Throwing them at each other typically defeats both of them in one hit, making it more effective than throwing a Mook at the ground or a wall. Bringing down Commander Hurgh's escape ship requires throwing many Mooks at it.
- Uplifted Animal: Rena can come across a race of intelligent, talking penguins.
- Waddling Head: One of the basic automaton types is nothing more than that.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Commander Hurgh's standard look is two bandoliers in place of a shirt.
- Wall Jump: Rena can do this.
- Some of the NPCs in the game have hair of varying hues as well.
- Zero-Effort Boss: The boss of World 6-1 is a single Hollow that just harmlessly dances and can be defeated by simply throwing it twice.
