Grime

We’re back to the wonderful world of soulslikes, but not just any soulslikes more specifically the 2D soulslikes. The ones that are more akin to metroidvanias and actually have their own identity. I know a lot of people are getting what Yahtzee Croshaw calls “soulslike fatigue” now due to the mass barrage of them coming out in recent memory outside of FromSoftware’s work. I as well had soulslike fatigue at some point, but personally all it takes is a good 2D one to reinvigorate me and keep my sanity together. I know soulslikes are games designed around challenge, trial, and error, but I never seem to get angry at the 2D soulslikes. The core reason why I’m so merciful to the 2D soulslikes is because they are made by smaller indie studios and they try to make the most out of the limitations. That and I like metroidvanias. I mean it’s my favorite genre afterall, so I tend to cater to titles within it. For now we’re just gonna call them metroidvania soulslikes, because there’s so many now that they’ve started a subsubgenre. Metroidvania soulslikes, I played them all or at the very least the ones that piqued my interest. Hollow Knight, Ender Lilies, Vigil, Death’s Gambit, Blasphemous, Salt & Sanctuary, Dead Cells, Moonscars, and Reveries Under The Moonlight. That last one has a boss fight where you fight against a giant big boobed woman, so that’s cool…. I guess. I love all these games and had a fun time with them each, but there’s been one metroidvania soulslike I’ve been meaning to play. One of the more underrated ones.

The game I’m talking about of course is Grime, a hardcore 2D action RPG with a dark sinister theme. Its influencer is very clear as the developers, Clover Bite, listed Dark Souls as a main influence. However, trying to describe Grime is very hard, to me at least, because it’s more than just a Souls immitators. Much like the games I just listed, Grime is doing something interesting to separate itself from the crowd. A world populated with unrecognizable lifeforms and where nothing truly made sense. There’s a mystery to be solved and you would have to bash your way through some of the most peculiar enemies I’ve seen in a video game to get to the center of that mystery. Clover Bite is an independent studio based in Israel, and spearheading the project was Yarden Weissbrot. He wanted to create a game that polished, refined, and demonstrated what Israeli people could accomplish if given the chance. He wanted a game that his people could be proud of, so he poured quite a bit of funding into his game and got the best individuals he knew to work on it. Grime is probably one of more expensive indie soulslike metroidvanias out there, and it makes use of current generation tech to create dazzling environments and characters. Grime was revealed out of nowhere to the public in 2021, and released the exact same year only a few months later. They didn’t release any footage prior to the development process, at least to my knowledge, and they were confident that their game would do well enough. For the studios’ first major outing, Grime is really freaking awesome and better than the developers hoped for it to be. It has a few problems, but that’s to be expected for a studios’ first game. It was fun, had an interesting world, and had a ton of love and content packed into it. As we speak, they are still adding content to the game with as Colors of Rot and Tinge of Terror.

Grime was good enough to garnish a 9/10 review score from IGN, which is surprising because IGN aren’t really the type of people to go check out obscure indie games. Grime currently has a Very Positive rating on Steam with close to around 3,000 reviews, and I’m surprised it isn’t any higher. Grime is amazing and I’m shocked I didn’t play this game sooner. I wanted to wait for the console release of the game and recently it was on sale, so I finally decided to give it a whirl. Played it on Playstation 5 to get the most optimal performance and rolled credits last night. I am stunned by what Clover Bite has accomplished and I can’t wait to see what next big project they make next. Today we’ll be talking about why I love Grime and why it deserves your attention.

Story

The game begins with what appears to be two beautiful beings soaring across the cosmos. Their hands clenched together, legs wrapping around each other, and chests tightening for a soft warm embrace. The two are lovers, but their importance to our being is unknown. We then cut to a dark cold cave in the middle of nowhere. A blackhole appears out of nowhere and from it emerges a living being. With a humanoid body made of stone and the blackhole taking the head’s place. You aren’t able to speak due to not being born with a head nor mouth, but you traverse the cave to see where you are. You find yourself in a world made of stone and bones. Of course there are creatures to populate this dead decaying world, but something is off. Their bodies are poorly put together, distorted, and they complain how miserable their lives are. That they weren’t made into the perfect shape and they seek an end to their suffering. Most of the rock beings in the area are quickly made of your presence and are jealous of how perfect your body is. Slim hands, balanced legs, a muscular chest, and a proportional sized head. They want to put an end to you, because you are just too perfect for them. However, one of the beings in the area calls you, “The Chiseled One,” and states you are the one described in the prophecy. He helps lead you towards the right direction and along the way you consume those who stand in your way. Absorbing the stone they are composed of and growing stronger by sucking in all of their essence.

You eventually make it to the Word Pillar, the center of the world. A peaceful sanctuary where calm travelers can rest and seek passage to a more peaceful plain. There you meet Shidra, one of the wisest beings in the world and he knows who you are. You are the one who will bring an end to the miserable everyone was born into, and to do that you must seek sacred artifacts scattered around the world. Shidra pinpoints to you where the artifacts are, and once all of them have been obtained they can venture forward. Reach the top of the world, perform the ritual, and ascend to a greater form. Along the way you’ll learn more of who you are, what you are capable of, and maybe how you are related to the celestial beings seen at the beginning. Darkness lurks within you and it wants is more. It craves more, it seeks more, and it hungers for more.

Gameplay

Grime is a soulslike metroidvania where you explore an interconnected world, fight dozens of enemies, and try to beat the next big boss blocking your way between you and progression. Your health bar dictates how much damage you can take before you are forced back to the last crystal pillar you rested at, and the stamina bar dictates what you can do. Attacking, dodging, jumping, and certain abilities you unlock all use stamina and when stamina is out you have to wait for it to refill before you can do more. One of the most unique mechanics is the ability to absorb your foes. You have a blackhole for a head and enlarging the head just when an enemy is about to strike allows you to absorb them as a whole. It’s basically your ability to parry and by absorbing your enemies you can fill up the Breathe meter. It’s your healing gauge and it can be triggered to slowly refill any health you lose overtime. At first you only have one breath meter, but you can unlock two more by defeating optional bosses hidden throughout the world. Absorbing enemies only works on those with a red health bar. You see not every enemy in Grime has a red health or can be absorbed in one faithful parry. Sometimes you have enemies with gray health bars and performing an absorb on them will only drain a small amount of their health, or you have an enemy with multiple health bars and some will have a mixture between the two colors. This isn’t a discouragement to absorb them though, because enemies with higher defense can be made easy work of if you master the art of absorbing and aggression perfectly.

Everytime you defeat an enemy or powerful boss you obtain Mass, and Mass is basically the Souls or Blood Echoes of Grime. They can be spent at crystal pillars, otherwise checkpoints, to level up one of numerous stats. Increase your maximum health, maximum stamina which is called force, or one of three other stats which dictates the scaling of your weapons. Strength will affect weapons that deal pure physical damage, Dexterity for lighter and more faster weapons, and Resonance for weapons with peculiar quirks or ailments. You can unlock a wide variety of weapons throughout this game and they all have different attack patterns, damage types, and speed. They can be upgraded by talking to Shidra, but you need a considerable amount of Mass and Bloodmetal pieces to reinforce them. Bloodmetal being these red crystal shards carefully hidden throughout the world, so explore carefully. When you die you don’t lose Ichor. Grime doesn’t have a corpse running mechanic like Dark Souls, and I do understand why because the checkpoints are really far apart from each other, and it’s easy to get lost especially when you enter a new area you can’t see the map layout because you find the beacon. However, they will lose a certain affinity. The player has this numbered meter where the more enemies they kill the higher this numbered meter goes. If the number is higher then the player will gain more Mass from defeated foes. If they take damage then the number is lowered, and if they die they lose half of the affinity they built up. This isn’t a major mechanic and it’s fine if you lose it during your travels, but it does reward players for playing perfectly and fighting everything.

As with many metroidvanias, the player will pick up a ton of character upgrades throughout the game and unlock abilities that open up new sections of the world to explore. A double jump, a midair dash, and one of the more major actions being the ability to pull. These upgrades are not only keys to open the way forward, but also offer new ways for you to traverse the environment. You better get really good at switching between abilities, because later platforming challenges in Grime are really demanding. Another one of the cool mechanics in Grime are Hunt Points. There are special enemies and bosses throughout the game that are deemed “Legendary Prey,” and by defeating them you gain Hunt Points. These points, much like Mass, can be spent at checkpoints but instead of leveling up stats you instead level up special perks. These perks can be stat boosts or grant you trade offs. For example, one perk allows you to regain stamina whenever you land a successful absorb, and there’s even one if you successfully pull a foe. There’s one that increases attack power when pulling a foe, one that increases stamina regeneration, a perk that doesn’t force you to lose half of the affinity I mentioned earlier, and much more. Legendary Prey can be difficult to defeat at times, but pursuing may give you the stuff you need to stand a chance. The bosses are crazy. Often having a multitude of attacks and constantly switching between them. It can be hard at first, but eventually you’ll nail down their pattern. Knocking them down to zero health and claiming a well deserved victory. Besides that there really isn’t much else I can say about Grime. Hopefully you can ascend to the skies and bring upon the end.

Thoughts

Grime is another stunning soulslike metroidvania that proves all it takes is a little bit of extra work to help separate yourself from the source material. I had an absolute blast playing this game and every challenge conquered felt like a satisfying achievement. Even when things got tough I wasn’t frustrated, because the game was mostly fair and eventually I would nail down what to do and persevere. Figuring out where to go, how to avoid traps, the best way to defeat a group of enemies, conserve my supplies, and get further into an encounter. Combat is great. That is to be expected of soulslike games, but I will say Grime has much slower and less responsive actions than most other games in the genre. Your attacks will feel delayed at first, but eventually you get used to it and it becomes really fun. All the weapons feel weighty, have impact upon landing, and none of them feel bad to use. You probably won’t be able to use all of them as they each have different stat requirements, and you can only reroll your build so many times before the game runs out of the resources that let you do so. There is quite a bit of build variety, and plenty of perks to experiment with.

I’m gonna say Grime is an even mixture between Bloodborne and Sekiro. Both of which have really aggressive playstyles, but I get that sense because you are constantly hunting down new prey to slaughter and every enemy, especially bosses, are puzzles you have to figure out. You need to know when they are open and when to punish them with critical attacks. There’s a lot of parrying involved and that might not be a playstyle for everyone, but I had fun with it. Every boss fight felt unique besides the game reusing the Rockgiant and Amalgam as secret encounters. My favorite boss fight in this game was probably against the Vulture. This giant winged creature that flies around the arena, spews projectiles everywhere, and tries to stomp on you using its bone body. Around this time you probably obtained the pull ability earlier, and you learned that certain foes can be punished using pull. This fight can be punished with pull pretty often, but then you still have attacks that need to be dodged and absorbed. So you’re mixing up between your three abilities and learning what is best. Then during the second phase the Vulture’s head flies off and its body becomes a hazard you can’t damage and must avoid. All the while you must deal with the bone head digging into the ground and slithering around the arena. It was an intense fight that took multiple attempts, but when I finally got the Vulture down it felt brilliant. I felt like a god and it’s from this encounter that future boss fights became entertaining. Tough, but fair. Every area feels distinct from one another and I will say the environments are gorgeous. Despite the world being dead and mostly consisting of rocks and bone, the atmosphere and the setting are masterful. You get the sense that something is definitely wrong or there’s a reason why things are the way they are. Why everyone seeks perfection and how it seems more civil places are inhabited by beings with more attuned bodies.

I will say though, the story and lore of Grime is really hard to understand. It took awhile for the ball to start rolling, and by awhile I mean the final area of the game kinda explains how the world came to be. I’m not gonna spoil the plot or anything, but to me Grime is a game about living and bringing an end to things. What you are doing is not right, but at the same time you have to consider everything around you. The people who are suffering and the state of the world. Do you wish to prolong the cycle or bring an end to it so that no one else has to suffer? It’s the same theme as Dark Souls, and while it’s not handled as well it’s on par. The music, dear lord, was an aspect that blew my expectation by a longshot. Grime has a stunning soundtrack and I’m really surprised it did not get nominated for any awards. It’s composed by Alex Roe who is a member of the Souls community. He did several covers of tracks across the Soulsborne series, and even did the soundtrack for Death’s Gambit. The world is dead silent, but when a song comes on it feels magnificent. A bombastic arrangement of instruments fuel you through the battles and everything gets more chaotic as the instruments get louder and louder. I really do hope Alex Roe gets more recognition for his work, because he’s truly making some extraordinary stuff. Platforming is pretty good and pushes you to use almost every ability you have. Some soulslike metroidvanias have had platforming before, but nothing that really pushes you. Grime pushes you and for the most part it’s fun. However, some sections are frustrating because they require you to have a quick reaction and the camera does not always give you a good idea of what’s coming off screen. Leading to instantly falling into hazards.

Grime is amazing in all of its core aspects, but I do have a few gripes. I think the healing system could have been improved. It’s not terrible and the thought behind it is good. Absorbing enemies and refilling it during your travels. That’s good and encourages players to master parrying which is something I usually hate in soulslikes. However, it doesn't work against enemies with gray health bars and it becomes more annoying when you face off against a boss with a huge gray health pool. You can’t refill during the fight, and if you didn’t pursue the breath upgrades like I did it means you can only heal once and you are done. I feel like they could have reworked this by having a foe that attacks, you parry, he attacks again, and each time you do so you get more breath refill. There are opponents who attack even after you successfully parry them, and I’m surprised they didn’t think of this as an option. The fast travel system before the Colors of Rot update is really bad. Before the update, you could only travel to certain sections of the world by finding these transport systems. Some of which can be missed, oftentimes these places don’t always put you close to where you need to be. A lot of the time you will be walking from place to place, and this can get really annoying with how the world is constantly expanding and it’s easy to forget where you can use newly obtained powers. They did fix this in Colors of Rot by allowing you to fast travel between checkpoints instead, but you have to beat an optimal boss with two phases and it can be really hard. Besides that, Grime is great. It took me close to around 12 hours to beat and there’s still a good handful of things to do even when you roll credits. For $25 it’s an absolute steal. I strongly recommend Grime and it sits up there with the genre’s best. I give Grime a 9/10 for excellence at best.