Dinosaurs make everything better and that holds true in my next appointment. This was our first game being shown off in the PAX Rising showcase area. GNAW tells the tale of Mack Ripley in New Dino City. Something is going down in the city and it’s up the Mack to figure it out.
GNAW is a Metroidvania with bite. In this game, I consider Mack to be a Raptor and it’s a good thing, because you have to open doors to get to new locations. Lucky for us, raptors have the ability to open doors. It feels like there are a lot of games coming out that are Metroidvanias so these games have to do something to differentiate from the pack. One way to do that is to have a dinosaur be the star. Another way is to have super tight controls as well as good writing. I love the fact that you save the game in a port-a-potty and that there are hidden outfits and costumes to find. In the demo, we found a long neck costume that was a hinderance at first but we had to wear it to get into a new location. We needed to be this tall to enter like at an amusement park. I really like the Porkpie hat as well.
Along the way you’ll unlock new moves and skills that you’ll need to get through the journey. After taking down a tough boss encounter, we unlocked wall jumping like Mega Man X. We also found a projectile attack and that made things easier. We found an upgrade to the projectile which made things a little more difficult.
You attack by biting and bonus points for having a dodge roll. You can tell when enemies will attack as they glow red. Roll when you see the red of their moves. The boss fights are interesting and challenging. We fought two squirrels and they spit up exploding nuts. I found out from the developer that you could munch the nuts and use that for healing/special attacks. You can store food/energy to use to get HP back or use projectiles. That would have been nice to know but I didn’t find that out until the fourth or fifth run against the squirrels. I really like the way GNAW looks and plays. The writing was fun too. Fans of the Metroidvania genre will want to check this out.