Super Nerd Sunday Presents: Legend of Grimrock is a Nostalgic Crawl!

There’s a lot to recommend Legend of Grimrock, and it’s tempting to say out the bat that originality isn’t one of those things. But there’s a problem with saying that.

It’s not actually true.

Legend of Grimrock isn’t an original design for a game. It doesn’t claim to be: it’s a celebration of old school game concepts from way, way back in the olden days, in the age when first person shooters were just coming into focus. Grimrock is a first person dungeon crawler, a member of a venerable genre that went out of fashion nearly a decade ago, in the days of Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. And even in those days, there was a trend leaning strongly away from the dungeon crawler: sure, the DND license on consoles heavily favored dungeon crawling elements, but even games like Warriors of the Eternal sun, which prominently featured dungeon crawling elements, relied heavily on tactical elements throughout most of play. And the Gold Box games on the PC, many of which used dungeon crawling mechanics to navigate all enclosed spaces, immediately cut to a tactical setting each time combat began.

And who can blame them, really? The dungeon crawler can be a nasty thing. It’s the showcase for some of the most punishing games in recent memory, games like Pathways Into Darkness which, let’s face it, would be tough sells to gamers now. Hell, Legend of Grimrock is a tough enough sell as it is, with its decidedly limiting style of gameplay and its constrictive, weaving corridors filled with things that, especially at the beginning of the game, have absolutely zero trouble killing you. It’s a marvelous throwback to games like Eye of the Beholder, where you’d regularly die in combat and, if you choose to do so, you can make it even more like Eye of the Beholder, removing automapping from the game and cranking the difficulty up to 1992 “pound my ass” levels.

It revels in its derivative nature, even as its easter eggs smirk at contemporary gaming trends and the constant slough of food you have to micromanage weighs down your inventory (along with the incredibly worthless treasure that you will, I assure you, collect for an achievement). There are no stores, no NPCs, no friendly towns, no plot twists. There are simply monsters to fight, puzzles to solve and corridors to navigate, corridors filled with deadly hazards just aching to destroy your party.

But that’s actually where the derivative nature of the game ends, more or less. Aside from ogres, skeletons, spiders and slimes, there aren’t really a lot of traditional fantasy creatures in Legend of Grimrock. Instead you’re treated to a menagerie of fiends making up a dungeon ecosystem that includes snails and terminates just above an enemy I’d describe most accurately as an “ice dinosaur.” It’s refreshing to see such creativity centrally oriented in a game so derivative of the past, and it carries through right to the end. I was laughing hysterically at the winking, fascinating final boss that Almost Human chose to pit players against, and its witty dialogue as it endures its death throes is spot on given the challenge and the pure absurdity of the fight.

And along with this new collection of baddies to hunt and kill (many of whom will drop delicious, delicious food for your party to eat – food you’re going to need quite badly) there’s a relatively functional physics engine which factors into many of the puzzles and a granularity to physical objects that is in equal turn remarkable and frustrating. It’s far, far more satisfying to sort these puzzles out than the more conventional dungeon crawler brain teasers, which are usually tied to poorly written un-descriptive poems that guide players through a set of obstacles that will, more often than not, prove infuriating. I spent almost an hour on a single puzzle that involved walking down a hallway because I selected the starting square incorrectly. It was not enjoyable, and the nature of the puzzle was such that it was difficult (especially as I grew more fatigued) to notice when a mistake had been made.

But that all ties back into the old schooliness of the game, the nature of Legend of Grimrock. It’s a love letter to a simpler time, a time before the internet and GameFAQs. It’s a game that plays on the excitement of discovering something new, but it’s also a game that exists in the era of Achievements where the expectation is that players will be able to find each and every item in the game and where they’re made quite aware of every item that they miss. That’s a problem in a game like Grimrock, where players without a guide are really, really unlikely to find every single item in the game.

But it’s not a problem of design: it’s a problem of mentality. It’s a problem of releasing a retro game in the world today. Retro games are punishing investigative enterprises disinterested in holding player’s hands, and most people are conditioned to expect constant feedback that will guide and inform their process as the game continues. The end result is a throwback experiences that blends modern sensibilities with an old school feel. It has enough of a feedback loop to engage players and enough frustrating puzzles to challenge and infuriate them. It’s got some original bits in a familiar, eeirily familiar in fact, package. And it’s got a basic character creation system with a total of twelve possible permutations that can then nuance their way into hundreds of possible skill/party configurations.

It’s a balancing act as much as it’s a game, and while it’s not an unpolished experience it is, in every intentional way, unrefined. If you think you can handle that, if you can bear to deal with old school challenges with a quick-save function mitigating their hurt… Give it a shot. At worst, you’ll quit after four floors in frustration.

That’s at worst. At best you’ll finish some puzzles and feel absolutely fucking brilliant for a few minutes. Then you’ll move on to the next puzzle, waiting for your smile to turn to a grimace.