When you think of a Soulslike game, you would think of a challenging game that will test your skills. However, when you think of playing a game in the actual Souls series, you think of constantly dying and challenging gameplay that it’s literally soul-crushing. Well, Grime isn’t just a Soulslike game; it is a soul-crushing experience just as the original challenging game series is! I have played through my fair share of challenging Metroidvania titles, but Akupara Games has delivered what Clover Bite has developed and it is the most fun-strating title that meets the genre.

Story

As the first carven born into the harsh, living-rock world, you set out on a journey that comes naturally to any carven. Leaving a wake of destruction and fallen enemies behind you, if not absorbed, you move through the world with no overarching goal until you reach the worldpillar. Here you meet a guide that offers aid to get you where all carven’s belong in return for assistance with some difficult tasks. Is this a trick or are you really about to reach somewhere you can call home in this hardened world? The only way to know is to complete the journey laid before you.

Gameplay

Starting off, you have the most minimal of abilities to work with. You have a basic attack, strong attack, absorbability, single jump, and dashing. In order to get more abilities and improve your movements, you will have to make your way through the game and defeat the bosses in your way. With every boss defeated, a new ability will be earned, such as dashing in the air.

To gain these abilities, your character does what only one with a black hole for a head can do; absorb the remains of the boss. This absorbability can be used on regular enemies you encounter as well. When using it on an enemy, it will really only affect them when they have a red health bar. If the health bar is brown, you will have to do actual damage with your weapon instead. Ultimately, you execute the absorb attack with the same concept as parrying an attack and when you use it on an enemy with a brown health bar, it will work the same as a parry just without damaging them.

Absorbing an enemy benefits you by refilling your breath meter. When your breath meter is full, you can heal yourself partially at any time. This meter can be refilled by a handful of items, but absorbing enemies is the most common way to do this. You can also find items that make it so your next absorption gives you a bonus amount of breath from a single enemy though, which is pretty handy.

Other than refilling your breath meter, every enemy that you defeat will give you points. These points can be used to purchase new weapons, upgrade your current weapons, or upgrade your character’s stats. You do have to have a minimal stat level to use some weapons, so until you know which weapon you really want to use, I suggest pointing points towards your health and force. I found having the ability to dash four times before waiting for the force bar to refill was the most useful number of consecutive dashes for boss fights and general movement.

When it comes to standard enemies, however, note that they will all respawn when you die and have to start back from your checkpoint. The only enemies that don’t respond are bosses, mini-bosses, and hunt point holders. Bosses and mini-bosses are pretty self-explanatory as to why they don’t respawn, but hunt point holders don’t because they are difficult enemies that once defeated give the player a hunt point. These hunt points can be used to give an assisted token to the player to provide a small boost in a specific aspect of the game, all of which have to be unlocked by defeating certain enemies and sometimes absorbing a certain amount of a type of enemy.

Items can be found throughout the map as well. These items range from damage boosters, breath refills, to extra points. Make sure to use them wisely because they are all a one-time use and aren’t given back to you if you die during a fight.

Interactable areas of note are the save pillars, which are the multiuse spot that acts as your checkpoint and character leveling, beacons, which will show you the map for the section you are in once activated, and fast travel system, which is only useful once you find multiple points and free them of their guardian. Each of these are shown on the map, once the beacon has been activated and you have found it once already, so they are easy to find a pathway for.

Audio and Visuals

When it comes to the aesthetics of this game, it comes with a mixture of cartoon gore and a bright gothic ambiance. With all the creatures having a fleshy-rock appearance, their deaths aren’t going to splatter or anything, but the damaging effect in the fights is evident. The style for the environments and backgrounds all have wonderful tones of darkness and unique lighting that blend together to create a curiously, beautiful world that I would never want to be in.

Sound effects are everything in this game because, aside from visual queues, there are sound queues to let you know when some attacks are coming. Learning what the different sound effects are will be a huge asset to making it through the game, just as much as the visual queues will aid your progress. All of the music provided is either light in volume or purposely made to be more relaxing than the gameplay provided, so it isn’t distracting but doesn’t leave you feeling left in a void either.

Replayability

While there are multiple weapons to try out and plenty of hidden areas to explore, I can only see those who enjoy the struggle and pain of these challenging games playing through it more than once. Besides, the game will take quite some time to complete, so if your concern lies in getting enough game time out of this game - trust me, you’ll get plenty of frustrating and challenging game time with this one.

What Could Be Better

Since the game is meant to be difficult and death is so easy to come upon, it was pretty frustrating that the checkpoints could sometimes end up being so far away from where I would die. I felt like I was backtracking a lot just because I would get through a few minutes of travel time just to reach a point with some hard enemies and end up dying again. There should be more checkpoints available for the players that just aren’t as good as others because I definitely would have benefited from that and I am fairly certain I’m not even one of the lower-skilled players with this game.

Fast travel system was pretty baren when it came to use opportunities. There should be a way to fast travel to each section of the map, but instead, they only had a way to fast travel to every other section. I did see a note in their discord that this is something they are planning to fix, but until they figure out how they plan to improve this, I would say that it will be a frustrating aspect.

Conclusion

Grime is quite an interesting soulslike game that is worth your time! I’ve never experienced entertainment while simultaneously constantly fighting through a soul-crushing world before. It was interesting and made me understand the Souls community a little better. Now, when I defeated a boss I felt so much relief but knew that I wouldn’t fight them again even if the game offered the chance to. The fact that even when you know the moves of a boss, after learning them through a series of attempts leading to death, you can still end up struggling through it was quite something to bring joy for overcoming the challenge. Truly a great game that is ready to punish anyone willing to accept the challenge!