You might be asking "how will he justify choosing yet another explormer for Indie Game of the Week this time?" and my answer is... I won't. I can't. I refuse to. People keep making these things and my impulse control is trash. Speaking of trash, but in a mostly positive tacky John Waters sort of way, we have the semi-recent Cookie Cutter: a cyberpunk story about a vengeful and murderously powerful robot girl chasing after the corpo villains that abducted her hot scientist girlfriend. Set in a world simply named the Megastructure, one built upon layers upon layers of alien technology and ancient detritus, the player as Cherry—a modified "Denzil" unit: a cyborg that carries inside it the amnesiac soul of a deceased human being—must fight through a number of industrial and dilapidated environments, eliminating alien and robotic resistance along the way (often a mix of both), to track down the megalomaniacal villain calling the shots of this hellworld and the one in current possession of said missing scientist girlfriend, Dr. Shinji Fallon.

This is one of those mostly traditional 2D explormers with an emphasis on combat, particularly the fast and brutal kind with a lot of combos and finishers. Brutalizing an enemy, which is to say dragging their health or grit (essentially poise from the Souls series) to low levels and hitting a fatality button, not only treats the player to some over-the-top gore but increases the usual rewards earned from fallen foes. Since these extras also include health and energy, two very useful stats to keep up mostly because you can burn energy at any point to heal (though you also need it for any seriously damaging attack), it's a system that you have to get attuned to pretty quickly. This also runs into one of the first big problems with Cookie Cutter, and one that it shares with the stylistically similar Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit: whatever shock and awe aspect can be attributed to these overly violent finishers gets old after the hundredth or so sighting, and since they're so integral you'll be hitting that number and beyond before too long. That there are so many enemies, and so few enemy types, can start to get dull quick. Fortunately, the combat itself with its combination of light hits (which replenish energy) and heavier specials (which drain energy; you see the dynamic taking shape here, I trust?) as well as a move you can acquire that simply flings enemies around with little damage but can be used to devastating effect if there are environmental traps nearby like laser grids and furnaces means the brawling is both electrifyingly fast and deeply satisfying, and the game frequently tests your mettle with little arena rooms that might have three or more waves a dozen enemies strong warping in at once. As well as simply air juggling and combo-ing everything to death you can also hit them with a good ol' parry: this eliminates a chunk of their grit, the aforementioned poise equivalent, and puts them in a critical condition for a finisher regardless of how much health they have left. I'm mostly parrying everything now just for a change of pace: the timing's as punishing as you'd expect, but for the more sponge-y enemies it's an effective way to wrap up things quickly. I beat a mini-boss in five seconds thanks to that feature, so I'm inclined to exploit it whenever possible.

Even for as occasionally delightful as the combat can be, the highlight is the fluid platforming that has the pace and precision of something like the Ori games: it's not long before you've acquired the customary double-jump and air-dash combo, and while the game's levels are a little on the pointlessly huge side the sheer pace at which you pound and hop your way through them makes backtracking a mite more palatable. Most of the collectibles are tied up in the game's "component" system: one similar to the badges of Hollow Knight, for instance, where you have a limited number of points with which to equip passive abilities like extra health or a faster heal. All these components need to be found first, as do the energy cells needed to increase how many you can equip at once, and upgrading these components requires cash and monster drops which can also be found in chests scattered around the environment. There's no shortage of things to find across these massive levels, and if you're able to spy something from the corner of your eye that presently sits out of reach the map system will at least remember it's there. In fact, the map system is a very accommodating one that highlights all sorts of resources and broken bridges you need the right traversal upgrades to surpass... that is, when it isn't occasionally glitching out and deleting big chunks of progress. I'll admit that's a pretty annoying bug and one that's managed to stay with the game in the eight months (at present) since it released, but I've at least figured out that it has something to do with the teleport fast-travel system and have stopped using it. As I said, you move fast enough that it's not a big problem to get around.

The game's most striking aspect is, of course, its art style and animations. It's going for a sort of Jamie Hewlett Gorillaz/Tank Girl aesthetic with its exaggerated and occasionally grotesque character designs and the flashy finishers are where you can see the animation at its most dynamic and, well, "loud" would be one way of putting it. Complimenting the Hewlett comparison, Cookie Cutter feels entrenched in the violent and iconoclastic indie comic book subculture of the '90s and '00s with sound effects often spelled out as onomatopoeia and plenty of distinctive graffiti and other visuals plastered against many walls in the game, bringing color and vitality to what tends to be a lot of similar factory- and office-looking spaces (for real, of the five locations I've unlocked so far, three are futuristic if downtrodden factories and industrial facilities). Traps as well are given a vibrancy that helps them stand out, an important visual consideration for all us players who'd rather not wander into them. The game's sense of humor tends towards the scatological and crude—the helpful deuteragonist that supplies exposition and direction just so happens to be Cherry's own talking robot vagina, which is named Regina—but its heart is often in the right place, such as with regards to the pear-shaped Cherry's body positivity and her sweet, genuine relationship with her missing paramour. The game's certainly courting a certain type of audience nostalgic for the riot grrl '90s and the big, outspoken, and irreverent attitudes of pop culture of the time; I'm a little hot and cold on it myself, mostly due to how often I've seen those darn finishers, but I certainly admire the amount of effort and artistry that's been put into the game's appearance. Barring Hell Yeah! there certainly aren't too many games in this genre that have a presentation quite this aggressive.

Cookie Cutter's one of those games that's not so much about pushing the envelope (except maybe in terms of taste) with feature-dense systems or unique gimmicks but more about having fun with a small degree of character-building and a wide assortment of rapid combat techniques and traversal abilities, filling its enormous maps with plenty of secrets and barriers to overcome at a later date when you're in a backtracking mood, and letting you populate a little hub area with eccentric NPCs and vendors while you continue kicking and punching seven bells out of the clunkiest and/or squishiest foes this bizarre setting has to offer. It's an uncomplicated addition to this great pantheon of explormers that's not so much about the slow, cautious exploration that has now started to seep into this sphere from the semi-adjacent Soulslike construct but more about just zipping around and finding trouble. Provided I don't fall afoul of that map bug too many more times, it's shaping up to be one of the better games of its type I've played and I've apparently played quite a few if this year's IGotW itinerary is any indication.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Post-Playthrough Edit: Well, the glitches didn't get any less annoying. In addition to the map-wiping one there's also a bunch of flying robot collectibles that are busted because some need to reset themselves to make specific puzzle rooms work, making 100% completion impossible to reach (though achievements are unaffected at least), but besides a few spotty quality assurance issues the game remained a pretty decent brawler right up until the end. I didn't mention it in the review because I guess I forgot all about it, but this game has much of Guacamelee's DNA also—though thankfully without having to keep knocking out regenerating colored shields all day long before I could do damage. Let Cookie Cutter see a few more patches before playing it and I think it will stand tall in your estimations as one of the more substantial skill-intensive explormers out there.