Grimm's Hollow Review
Played on PC
Developed by ghosthunter
Released 30th October 2019
Grimm's Hollow is one of those hidden gems you'll come across if you go dumpster diving on Steam. It was released on Itch.io and Steam on Halloween and developed on the RPG Maker 2003. Unfortunately, there is very little known about this game or its developers but it can be said; that this game lacks much-deserved attention.
Story
Grimm's Hollow manages to elegantly uphold an embracing tale of sorrow. The game's story is centred around Lavender, a girl who has recently been reincarnated as a Reaper in the small town of Hollow. Lavender spends this short gametime helping her newly deceased brother, Timmy, to ensure he passes on into the afterlife. While the game manages to capture an essence of humour in some dialogue, it mostly consists of depressing themes concerning mortality. The game didn't often succeed with the sombre moments, but when it did, it made me feel heartbroken.
Gameplay
The gameplay is simplistic but great. It adopts a basic, turn-based RPG formula with an added time-based mechanic that scales damage output and dodging. It also throws in some special attacks you can do if you build up this game's equivalent of ‘mana’. Slap on a skill tree that offers new moves to perform like poisoning a target or obliterating an enemy's shield and you have got yourself well-made combat. The game also tries to diversify the gameplay by adding various types of enemy colours and items, however, I mostly found myself overlooking that feature as the gameplay was easy enough and any further depth felt pointless. From the beginning, the game strikes a perfect balance in terms of difficulty but once I upgraded a couple of times in the skill tree, I managed to fly through all the enemies with ease, denying the need for items that heal the player. The game also consists of "bosses", but these were not innovative and different enough from the other enemy ghosts for me to count them as proper bosses - cool designs though. Fortunately, the game does not suffer from a monotonous design in gameplay, despite it being oversimplified. This is due to it being only a 2-hour journey through the 3 caves you will come across, meaning that there is no time for you to feel bored. The enemy design is brilliant and the various forms of attacks that are present are impressive.
Characters
The characters of Grimm's Hollow are great. These well-designed personas truly bring out the emotion the story aims to deliver. Whether it's despair or comedy, characters like the charming Baker, or innocent Timmy help gift these. Lavender as a protagonist is done successfully as well, since her emotional and mental state is clearly shown to be more complex than initially thought, due to the 4 possible endings. As a bonus, the game's adaptation of the Grim Reaper is by far the most unique and coolest I've seen.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere of this game is also great. Even though it's indie-developed, the amount of attention to detail in both the pixelated graphics but also the interactions made is astounding. The delicate music was great but didn't reach a level that made it stick with me overnight. On the technical performance scale, it suffered no problem except a nitpick in which the screen wasn't fully maximised.
Story- 8/10
Gameplay- 7/10
Characters- 8/10
Atmosphere- 7/10
Good
A short, free, narratively-creative game that succeeds in its simplicity and should be played if you own a PC.
