L is for... Legend of Grimrock

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Game Information

Developer:	Almost Human Games	Date Started:	16/01/2025
Platform:	Steam	Fresh Play / Continuation:	Continuation
Genre:	RPG	Time Played:	14.4 hrs
Theme:	Fantasy	Date Finished:	27/01/2025
Difficulty Rating:	Challenging	Recommendation:	Highly Recommended

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I first got into the first-person dungeon crawler experience when I played Stonekeep. I know others had come out before it, but this was the one that intrigued me as a kid. I probably even have the CD somewhere.

When I played it, I will admit I didn't understand the game's nuances. I often tried to bash my way through everything, which got me killed a lot. I did however make it quite far, but I reached a point where I couldn't progress any further because I was out of health, healing potions and everything was killing me simply by breathing on me. So for a time, I had abandoned the game. It was only recently (March 2023) that I returned to it and FINALLY got to see the end credits.

Now Legend of Grimrock was a game that piqued my interest around the time it had first come out because it reminded me of Stonekeep. When I first tried it out, I hadn't made it far - maybe two floors - before I moved on. It wasn't because of boredom or lack of interest. It was simply a case of installing something else and never getting back around to it.

Well, I am now pleased to say that is no longer the case.

As I played the game, it brought back all the fond memories of my time on Stonekeep. I did have to change some of the control schemes to mimic that game because even though I had completed it in 2023 I was still expecting certain key presses to behave the same way.

I loved the exploration within the game. At no point did it feel tedious. There were some back-and-forth moments, but never anything that felt dragged out. Most of it was because I finished exploring a section and found a clue or key to get past an area that I had not yet gotten through. So obviously, I would travel to that section to get past it. There were a couple of times when I had to go back to a floor to retrieve an item - for example, I needed three torches to solve a puzzle and unlock a door. I merely went up a floor, grabbed the first three torches from their wall sconce, and viola, I was moving ahead again.

It does help that you can never really lose an item in the game. Your characters have very limited inventory space, so eventually you're going to be looking at all the junk you've been lugging about and contemplating what to leave behind. I often left piles of unwanted items by stairs so that on the off chance I did discard anything I needed, it wasn't going to be a nightmare trying to remember where it was I dumped it. Thankfully, it never really came to me needing an item I had left behind.

One element that I really liked in Legend of Grimrock but was not present in Stonekeep was the use of lighting and shadows. At the start of the game, you need to carry a torch with you if you want any hope of seeing what's in front of you. Later on, you can find other light sources that end up freeing your hands for other important things. But the light also has another use - to cast shadows. At one point, I was in an area where I was facing a wall. There was an empty space behind me and on the wall, there was a torch. I happened to be reading a note that I had found - and keep in mind, note reading; inventory checking, and map reviewing do NOT pause the game - when a skeleton walked into the space behind me. How did I know? Well, the torch on the wall behind us cast his shadow on the wall in front of me. It was an absolutely brilliant touch!

A game like this also has a ton of secrets which makes exploring even more worthwhile. Now the secrets varied from easy to how in God's name was I meant to figure that out?! Easy secrets mainly involved a hidden button on a wall that would reveal a secret room or passage on the same floor. Medium secrets were timed or required quick reflexes. Harder ones usually had a clue lying about to help solve them. But then you had ones where honestly I don't know how I would have come to the conclusion that I did. For instance, there was one secret that required you to sacrifice an item to a pit behind a grate. When you did, you would get your item back and a pair of trousers. Now the secret was, if you THEN sacrifice the pants, you get them back and an even BETTER item. I mean, what would possess me to try sacrificing that, when you don't really get anything else if you try to sacrifice other items?

One other feature that I liked, which saved me plenty of headaches, especially during the final fight, was that I could disengage from an enemy and retreat to a safe spot to heal (and save if need be). In most RPGs that I know of if you escape a fight and/or leave the area, the enemy replenishes all of their health so you need to start over again. In the final fight, considering you have the big bad and a room full of respawning monsters, I was grateful for this.

When I beat the game, however, I was left with two very important questions. Without revealing what happens in the final floors of the game, the questions may be vague, but once you play Legend of Grimrock you'll know exactly what I mean.

The first question was: Why didn't the builders leave warnings outside Grimrock to stop people from throwing prisoners into it to prevent them from accidentally doing what I had just done.

And the second question was: And after I had done that, and fixed my own mess, WHY didn't the builders do that in the first bloody place?!

Seriously, when you reach the end of the game, you realize that EVERYTHING could have been avoided simply by having one of those two questions answered. Still, it wasn't enough to ruin the game for me. It was just one of those things that you realize after the fact, and I know my characters would have been bitching about as they fled the dungeon.

I will eventually get around to Legend of Grimrock 2 (which honestly, I don't know how the game has a sequel with the way things ended). I have it scheduled for my next swing around. Hopefully, it will be just as good, if not better, than its predecessor.

But for now, we move on with M is for Martha is Dead