Genre: RPG
Developer: Almost Human Ltd.
Publisher: Almost Human Ltd.

Grimrock is one of the most distinctive-looking video games of the past decade, or perhaps even longer. Its ultra-detailed yet clean aesthetic is truly one-of-a-kind, and manages to feel claustrophobic without being as impossibly oppressive as other games, such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The enemy designs give off the same sorts of distrubing vibes that characterized first-person, sprite-based RPGs of the late 80s and early 90s. Amazing!

The trend in video game audio over the past few years has followed a less-is-more philosophy, leaning more on ambient sounds and even sheer silence as a way of instilling emotion in the player. While Grimrock doesn't succeed in this regard as strongly as some other recent titles, such as Resident Evil 4, audio does play a meaningful role in the game's puzzles, and player awareness (and dread) of enemies.

Grimrock consists of navigating tile-based dungeons in the first-person, Shining in the Darkness-style, while engaging in puzzle solving and enemy fighting. Like the Souls games, every single enemy encounter in Grimrock is a life-or-death ordeal, and fighting against even two oppponents sumultaneously, all real-time, can be too big of a hurdle to overcome. Many of the puzzles consist of environmental hazards as well, making Grimrock a thinking man's game.

Like good cinema, Grimrock doesn't go out of its way to bombard the player with explicit narrative-- rather, it drops them into a dungeon and lets them work their way out. The game's user interface provides the player with the tools to accomplish this goal, allowing for combat actions and inventory manipulation via the mouse, and movement via the keyboard, all in real-time. Grimrock, what with its single setting and slow-paced style, is hardly an expansive epic. But its brilliance can be found in its very focus.