Subcult Joint LTD introduced their new project that immediately made it to my Steam wishlist: Cookie Cutter. The trailer of the game holds no punches and starts… with the brutal death of the protagonist. Wounded and beaten, our android character drags her body towards the one who kidnapped her creator, Dr. Shinji Fallon. This psychopath and the Corporation’s degenerate lapdog is named Salem Garbanzos, and he’s capital Bad News.
Then the trailer swaps into a hellish Metroidvania where the protag chops, destroys, rips, tears, strangles and finds any other way she can dispatch the creatures of the Corporation, all accompanied by mad beat and wild animations.
The story is hardly original, but it is presented in an unusual manner. First of all, the magnificent style of narration, filled with secrets and omissions and presented in a ragged, uneven fashion. The second thing you notice is the visuals and music, brutal cruelty and ultra-violence. There are plenty of Metroidvanias where the developers have tried to clean and polish the world of the game and hide all the gritty parts under pretty graphics.
But Cookie Cutter had chosen another approach. The developers openly declare that their game is cruel, obscene and brave in this admission.
The story of the game revolves around the Abyss and the Red Seed that gave rise to Matter which later became a Megastructure. A dystopian world where a mad leader seeks to uncover the secrets of the universe.
The INFONET Corporation promised to build a perfect world on the shoulders of tirelessly working androids, but it was a lie. 200 years later, the planet is in decline and the mysterious Red Seed has been stolen. Raz, a renegade mechanic, searches for the mysterious laboratory but instead finds the protagonist, Cherry, hacked into pieces and barely clinging to life.
When it comes to gameplay, Cookie Cutter is a textbook Metroidvania, exquisite in its violence and direct approach. Players explore locations, regularly come across obstacles that can be overcome after unlocking certain skills, and fight. A lot.
At first, you grapple in exclusively close combat, much like in Axiom Verge 2 and Guacamelee! At first, your Android protagonist can only use her fists and legs to deliver some ass-kicking, but later you will get access to a variety of items that will aid you in pain delivery.
The developers worked hard to make the fights feel varied: there are enough types of opponents and plenty of abilities. By collecting the special currency, you can upgrade your weapons, including the various attack combos, find new modules and skills in special terminals… At first, you just crush your opponents with your fists, but once you open the first weapon and receive the simple combos, you can start creating electronic music, punching ground, throwing enemies in the air, and so on. Skills allow players to diversify the fighting style with spitting fire or breaking through special platforms to open paths or shortcuts.
At the same time, you can swap your approach even to the same enemy type. Once you are sick of simply punching someone to death, you can throw in dodge and backstab, or even throw your enemy in the air and then finish ‘em off while they’re getting back up. When push comes to shove, you can even spit fire at your enemies or take advantage of counter-attacks and blocks to Execute the unfortunate foe. You can also use the location and surroundings themselves, like throwing enemies at the saws or into the stove.
Executions are a whole separate form of art: each enemy gets executed with a particular level of cruelty when they have 5% HP left. There are different ways to go about it, unique ones for each enemy type: some get crushed, others get their spines ripped out, or broken in half, or strangulated… These scenes alone make up for the sheer number of enemies in the game.
As any Metroidvania out there, Cookie Cutter has systems for empowering your character, her abilities and weapons. You will have to pay for everything with various materials and currencies you get from killing mobs, including upgrading your Cannons which opens up both increased damage and interesting new combos.
Modules allow players to use special abilities. Double jump, breaking through metal doors, dragging key balls with uppercuts, etc. All these skills will help in discovering certain mysteries. Backtracking gameplay is a standard for any Metroidvania, and unsurprisingly it is the norm for Cookie Cutter as well. Got a new skill means got a way to unlock a new shortcut or reveal a previously unavailable secret, or got a way to explore interesting things in previously available locations. It is up to you whether or not you want to return for these extra bits or if you just want to press onward.
Separately, you can improve your “generator” that allows Cherry to install upgrades. For example, one of those will slightly increase the radius of attacks, the second one will allow you to heal faster, and so on. Finding them at first might be quite problematic, but they do upgrade Cherry in a massive way.
True, it is necessary for the generator to have energy which ALSO needs to be found and increased. At first, having 4 energy cells was enough only for a singular upgrade, but after 3 locations you can ramp it up to 6 cells and 3 upgrades! It aids you in battles significantly.
Here is how the developers describe their game on Steam, and they are being sincere:
“Cookie Cutter is unabashedly irreverent, violent, and risqué. Become Cherry, a badass android on a rage-filled and love-driven quest. To save her beloved creator she’ll explore and fight her way through a unique illustrated sci-fi dystopian world as she chainsaw-murders anybody who stands in her way.
Every frame of this immersive experience is drawn by hand with copious amounts of love. That means epic, fall-out-of-your-chair visuals. Grotesque bugs and menacing robots. Gargantuan bosses. Ridiculous weapons, special moves, and brutal gory finishers. All of it brought to life with benchmark 2D animation.”
The game provides a really frantic, cruel, amazingly beautiful and dynamic experience. At first, I had to die very often, we are talking about 10 deaths in 15 minutes, until I got used to the combat system, learned how to counter-attack successfully, and studied the enemies’ mechanics. Hollow Knight felt simpler and more intuitive in the beginning compared to Cookie Cutter, but once you get used to it, the game shows what it is really capable of with its excellent gameplay and delightful graphics.
I can’t point out what exactly causes one to fall in love with this game, it lies where the amazing graphics, killer dynamic music, and interesting plot revealed via a myriad of notes, connect together in a tight and promising core.
The heroes of the game have their own characters and don’t seem to be just cardboard cutouts for the sake of explosive violence, the story of Althea had me running around, reading and touching anything that can add more to her background. There are many details of the games that are revealed by interacting with terminals or checking out notes hidden in secret rooms. Some of those change your perception of what is going on in a significant way.
I sincerely recommend this game to any Metroidvania lover and for those who take a certain pleasure from ultra violence – here, you will be able to enjoy it to the fullest.
Note: an early access key for a preview version of the game was provided for the purposes of this article. Stay tuned for the full review!
