Welkin Road Preview

A first-person platforming game has to nail the momentum. Without it, falling from great heights has no impact, and there’s no illusion of speed when moving through the world. A game that gets it right like Welkin Road comes along only once in a while, and is immediately better for it.

Welkin Road takes the fundamentals of all those free running games we’ve had over the past decade and introduces a unique element - a grapple hook - and implements it in a more nuanced way than others. The gauntlets the player character wears can connect to floating orbs on the path and swing from them; you can propel yourself forwards, upwards, around corners… almost anywhere. Welkin Road is basically the best Spider-Man game ever made.

When the rush of movement is your key focus, you don’t want to be distracted by rainswept rooftops, glaring billboards, or sporadically placed air conditioning units. Welkin Road’s levels take place amongst a skyscape of minimalistic, coloured structures - resembling more a dolly mixture-induced dream than anything else. This design follows a recent trend within independant games of style over substance; for relatively smaller effort, an environment can be created that is not only more appealing than a cluttered urban cityscape, but also far quicker (and more cost-effective) to produce—and when considering that Welkin Road appears to be the work of a single man, it makes a lot of sense.

Without an overarching narrative to weigh it down, Welkin Road becomes a series of puzzles to complete; the free running becomes a challenge rather than filler. Each level is painted a different colour, and presents its own mechanics relating to its coloured orb. The introductory red stage has only red orbs, which remain fixed in the air for you to swing from and climb with. The green stage uses red and green—which change something in the environment—and so forth, with the later puzzles requiring complete mastery of every nuance in the game.

Having the levels laid out in a linear fashion has its benefits, with the first puzzles giving you a basic understanding, the next showing how the ideas can be manipulated, and the last being a true test of skill. On the other hand, it does mean that when you reach the trickier ones, you know you either have to work it out or give up—and believe me, some of them made me want to never touch this game again.

As of now, Welkin Road has two modes: Exploration and Speedrun. The latter removes all the secrets and the hints, and has you racing to the finish against other players’ times. Using the same stages, it adds a reason to slowly perfect your run on your own before taking it up against others’.

Realistically, I can’t see Welkin Road appealing to everyone. It requires quick but precise responses, with grappling onto the orbs feeling almost random at times. A measure of trial and error is needed to tackle some of the tougher puzzles, and if you don’t have the patience to keep trying again and again, you might bounce right off this.

Over the few days I’ve had with Welkin Road, there have been a few minor updates: the only adjustment I have actually spotted is how the aiming reticule has changed when you can attach to an orb. Further down the line, there are plans for a level editor too, which would help to expand the unavoidably limited number of stages.