The Legend of Grimrock

Tile-based games are growing old. So old, in fact, that their coffin may as well just contain dust and derelict save crystals. With full 3D movement supported by powerful engines like Unity or Unreal, the idea of being bound to grid-paper maps and 90 degree turns seems like thoughts from the dark ages. Legend of Grimrock is an old-fashioned game, but that doesn’t mean it can’t use the tools of the past to create an experience worthy of the present.

Legend of Grimrock is a tile-based RPG in which you command a band of four prisoners bound together. Your entire party occupies a single square, with two in the front and two in the back. Those in the back cannot reach the front with melee attacks, and so must utilise bombs, bows, magic and the odd well aimed pebble to attack from safely behind the meatshields waving their sticks and occasionally fists around in front of them.

The combat itself may sound basic from that description but in reality it serves as being exceedingly cathartic. Each hit feels like a meaty swing of an angry minotaur, each fireburst a satisfying bang of flame. The usual circle-strafe strategy of tile-based games can work well at first, when aught you’re fighting are snails and mushrooms, but the enemies can get smarter and more coordinated as you go, the walls tighter and more restrictive. Sooner or later, you’re going to need to start learning and understanding enemy movements and how to best counteract them with the tools you have available.

Which isn’t all that much. The game had a sneaky habit of always making you feel like you’re underequipped or unprepared, even when you aren’t. The foreboding, oppressive atmosphere of the dungeons of Grimrock may be the cause of this – or perhaps the fact that enemies tend to feel like they have plenty of health to spare. Either way, you can only equip yourself with what you find lying around the dungeon, which means that you either need to learn to hunt secrets or march on underpowered.

For secrets there are plenty of. Hidden buttons on walls, puzzles of reflexes or problem solving skills, the occasional optional combat challenge. There are plenty of false doors and locked away treasures worthy of your time to gather, and getting at least some of them is a prerequisite for doing well. This is balanced out by how easy some of them are to find, so it’s not really a big problem, and it certainly feels rewarding to solve the riddle and see the hidden door slowly rise, revealing the glimpses of loot behind.

Going back to the oppressive atmosphere I mentioned earlier, the game is exceedingly good at making you feel like everything’s out to get you. Not only are the enemies against you, but the dungeon itself is filled with traps, pitfalls and even worse ways of making your day painful. It gives me gleeful memories of my first run of Dark Souls – tentatively peaking from behind shields or round corners in fear of what may lie behind.

It didn’t take me long to realise that these traps are far less lethal than those found in the Souls series – with plenty of pitfalls actually containing treasures and secrets along with the predatory slew of enemies. By the time I started actively flinging myself into these traps, I realised how little impact they actually had on my party. The game was making me scared over nothing, and was rather leading me carrot-and-stick style into the bowels of the unknown. I actually like this method of employing traps though. It rewards both skill and knowledge of the game while allowing less experienced players to avoid any excess challenges if they can get their head around the games puzzles.

And the puzzles themselves are incredible. The game manages to stretch its reasonably small pool of interactive parts (that being buttons, pitfalls, teleport squares, pressure pads and torch holsters) into a vibrant array of brain teasers – and it nary ever repeats itself. This forces the player to change how they understand the mechanics and functions of these devices and of the dungeon as a whole. At the same time, it prepares them for the secret hunting I mentioned earlier; rewarding those who learn from these puzzles and starts to see the tricks behind the moss-strewn walls. It all builds on this unnerving sense of paranoia that the dungeon itself is plotting against you.

Legend of Grimrock is a game with a firm understanding of what it wants to do. The darkness that forces you to carry a torch that slowly fades, the tight corridors that restrict your movement: The game wants you to feel at its mercy. Like the encroaching walls are the foe you really fight. It makes the very environment feel hostile in as thick a manifestation as Silent Hill 2 or Amnesia: the Dark Descent. And this just gets me back to the start here – why LoG uses these older mechanics. Their age makes them feel odd – uncanny. They’re unfamiliar to a large part of the audience, and that makes them feel uncomfortable. Every part of the game is built either around or in favour of this atmosphere of mistrust, and it’s that feeling that makes Legend of Grimrock so good. It hates you – and it’s going to make sure you know it.