‘Legend of Grimrock’ has sold over one million copies since it’s release in 2012.(Photo courtesy of Almost Human Studios)
Brendan Jacques
Connector Editor
“Legend of Grimrock” is a fantasy dungeon crawler which was released by four-person indie studio Almost Human back in 2012. In the game, you play as a group of four adventurers, who for various reasons have just been sentenced to death for treason. However, rather than execute you personally, the king of the realm has given you the chance to escape your fate, provided you’re able to survive the titular Mount Grimrock, a massive stone mountain housing one of the most deadly prisons ever built. Many before you have entered Grimrock seeking their freedom, but none have ever come out alive. Perhaps if you build your characters well and play smart, might just be the first.
If it sounds like the plot of this game is barebones, it’s because it is, and that’s okay. While there is some background lore to be found in the dungeon proper, as well as a side plot involving the fate of the prisoners who attempted Grimrock before you, the plot is mostly there as an excuse for putting the player in a dungeon with seemingly endless floors. Where the game ends up differentiating itself is in the gameplay department, and it accomplishes this by playing like almost nothing else on the market today.
From the offset, the game gives you control over all four adventurers as they explore Mount Grimrock, which involves your usual assortment of puzzle solving, monster fighting, and secret room searching. What makes the game unique is that the entire dungeon is designed in a grid pattern, and the player’s party of heroes move in a fixed square formation across this grid. Using this mechanic, the game is able to sidestep one of the common issues with party-based role-playing games: micro-managing a party of adventurers with inconsistent AI is frustrating and over-complicated. By making the gameplay occur on a grid, the player is left with both total control over their party and clear information about how the party can move and what it can do, which gives them more room to make strategic decisions and manage their party’s needs on the fly. This grid system underlies one of “Legend of Grimrock’s” greatest strengths: it takes gameplay systems that would normally be complicated and makes them easy to understand and intuitive to use without taking away the difficulty.
Another good example of this philosophy is with the combat. Fighting monsters happens entirely in real time, with the player left in charge of deciding how each of their fighters attack while also dodging around the enemy’s attacks where possible. While in most other games this kind of balancing act would be incredibly cumbersome, the game streamlines this by making it so that each character can only attack with weapons they are currently holding, and all attacks are done by right-clicking each weapon they want to attack with. This allows the player to micro-manage their party’s abilities more easily than otherwise possible, which gives them more time to concentrate on dodging enemy attacks and observing their environment. However, the combat stays difficult because, while the act of fighting is itself simple to understand, the process of managing each of your character’s abilities, creating health potions, or switching your character’s weapons mid-battle is left purposely cumbersome, making more challenging battles that much more intense.
Sadly, if the game has one major flaw, it’s with its graphics, or if you want to be more specific, the lack of variety in its graphics. The game as a whole looks perfectly serviceable; the environments have a good level of detail, spell effects and lighting are simple but well done, and the monster designs and animations are great for the most part. The problem arises with how often the game is forced to reuse those same assets for different areas to the detriment of the game’s aesthetic. There are times where you’ll need to backtrack to previous areas in the dungeon, but don’t know where to go without a map because all the tunnels use exactly the same vine-covered stone texture. This isn’t a deal-breaker by any means and it’s mostly excusable since the game otherwise looks fine, just bear in mind that this game was made on a pretty tight budget.
The lack of visual flair aside, “Legend of Grimrock” is an excellent example of stripping the role-playing genre down to its bare essentials to offer both a fresh take on that genre and a love letter to it. If you’re interested in picking it up, the game is available on PC and Mac for $15. A port of the game is also available on Iphone and Ipad for $5, though it’s important to note that we at the Connector haven’t played this version and don’t know how it compares to the original edition, so it’s recommended you play the PC version if interested.
