Grime [Xbox]
Developed by Clover Bite, Grime is a punishing 2.5D souls-like metroidvania set in an absurd, unfamiliar world populated with all kinds of anatomical horrors. You play as a strange, stone body known as a Vessel, who lurches into existence with a purpose of exploring this alien terrain and facing the surrealist nightmares within. Other stone creatures you meet will marvel over your aesthetically-pleasing ‘Carven’ body, longing for the same - with a cult-like belief that a perfect form is the source of happiness. Your particular Vessel - often referred to by others as ‘the Chiseled One’ also just so happens to have a functional black-hole for a head, resulting in the below song becoming the unofficial anthem for Grime in my mind, no matter how hard I try to stop it, with my brain altering the lyrics to ‘hole for a head’. Who thought Sugababes would make an appearance in one of my reviews? Certainly not me…
Can’t help but think of this when I look at the protagonist.
Enemies have varied attack styles, with some being much quicker - and more dangerous - than others, and it takes a little bit of practice to get used to how to deal with them all. Combat is challenging, but fun - and feels satisfying as you get stronger and stronger. Finding new, improved weapons and armour will help you to deal more damage, and defend yourself against enemies - with a wide variety available to be found - or upgraded through visiting the Breathsmith (or a Surrogate) with a bunch of trusty Bloodmetal Shards. Enemies drop various resources upon defeat, as well as increasing your Mass and Ardor, with Mass being the key to increasing your strength and upgrading your Vessel.
Parrying attacks will deal a decent amount of damage, even if the weapons you currently have aren’t doing so well - though red attacks cannot be parried, so you’ll need to stay alert and dodge these when they happen. Successfully parrying an attack will allow you to instantly absorb your enemies, unlocking passive skills; making it far more beneficial to parry attacks in order to then absorb, doing so to as many enemy types as possible. Some enemies will have health bars that are broken into sections, with grey, stone-like segments that are unable to be absorbed, instead needing to be weakened back into a red segment before this can be done.
Checkpoints are known as Surrogates - large stone monuments that you can imprint upon to activate - with the most recently activated (or visited) being the one you’ll reform at once you Shatter. Death is not the end though - instead, you’ll lose any Ardor you’ve collected (essentially a multiplier for the Mass you gain), but Mass can then be used to develop your Vessel whilst at the Surrogate: Health, Force, Strength, Dexterity and Resonance can all be improved. If you track down your Shattered Lost Vessel and destroy it, you will regain half of the Ardor lost, so it’s always worth doing so where possible.
Grime’s visuals can be assumed by title alone - everything has a very grimy, decrepit look, at least early-on in the game - but in spite of this, it often has an eerily beautiful quality to it, too. There’s lots of stone used to build up environments, along with bone, sinew and tangled webs of nerves making up some areas, and other locations having stunning, celestial appearances. Bosses are wildly creepy monstrosities known as Great Prey, with designs that range across massive, trippy stone heads with gangly limbs erupting from them, to skeletal Vultures and more. The soundtrack composed by Alex Roe, is phenomenal, with a really dark, otherworldly feel imbued through all 29 of its powerful tracks; and the ominous, melancholic droning of the ambient tracks playing throughout the world, composed by Sean Secca, equally haunting.
Originally released on PC, but launched on consoles alongside the Colors of Rot expansion, which brought with it a bunch of new content ranging from a new area with new bosses and abilities, traits, enemies and weapons. There’s also new rewards for backtracking, and new NPC interactions, as well as a cinematic that wasn’t previously included. A further, free expansion has since been released, Tinge of Terror, which adds a New Game + mode (accessible after you defeat the final boss), as well as abilities known as Sanguine Ichors that can be gained through defeating the bosses again, encouraging you to give them all just one more go.
There’s plenty to see and do in Grime, with the story unfolding through small pieces of dialogue that keep you invested throughout, and with both of the expansions being huge - and free - it gives you plenty of reason to stick around after completing the main story. The ‘Hunt’ aspect also encourages you to spend plenty of time focusing on tracking down all of the weird and wonderful creatures to absorb; attuning beacons to reveal segments of the map as well as activating the Nervepass fast-travel system will aid you in this, since the map is so staggeringly large and Metroidvanias seldom have a straightforward layout to remember. Priced at £20.99 on Xbox, Grime is a thoroughly enjoyable game, especially for those looking for a challenge. Hopefully we’ll see even more content continue to be added in future.
In the end, we decided to give Grime the Collecting Asylum rating of 9/10.
Are you interested in Grime? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Akupara Games for the Grime Xbox review code!
