A downloadable spoop for Windows.
Grimm's Hollow is the heartfelt project of a single person and it shows - in both the good and ugly.
What is it exactly ? An ATB turn-based JRPG about a one-woman-party clearing three dungeons to rescue her brother and bring him back to life after their abrupt passing that'll last you a short 2~3 hours session.
Right from the start the game impresses with a witty and charming writing that delivers emotional punches with the steady rhythm of punctuation signs and develops a small but well-written cast of likable characters thorough the entire journey, making this title a well-paced, bittersweet ride. The tone and quality of the story is backed up by a spoopy artstyle with bare but functional visuals for the overworld and wonderful sprite arts and animations in your battles against ghosts that tread the thin line between cute and horrifying. On that note, the bestiary is varied, with stronger versions of earlier ennemies coming back in a more evolved form rather than a mere palette swap.
Unfortunately this is where the praises for the title end and the messiness that is the rest of the gamedesign begins.
Exploring the dungeons themselves is devoid of any challenge or interesting mechanic ; there wouldn't even be any mechanic to speak of if it wasn't for vaguely-telegraphed hidden wall keeping you interested in your surroundings. Fortunately the (albeit limited) visual variety between them, some oddly shaped rooms or interesting scenery and the varied patterns of movement of the ghosts before you engage them in battle salvage the awfully bland exploration but you'd be hard-pressed to call dungeon diving a net positive for the game.
You'll gather Soul Energy after each battle and while exploring, which can be spent to learn new moves, upgrade the one you possess or improve your stats. It all goes downhill when you realize that the game's formula massively favor raw stats, turning what should be a small deficiency into a gruelling hindrance and, conversely, maxed stats into gamebreakers.
Max defense makes you immune to all non-piercing damages in the game, max attack allows you to one or two shots every late-game monster and max speed will let you take two or three turns before they do. The final boss itself could only deal 20 damages to Lavender out of her 500HP on a successful hit, and that was after it boosted its stats.
Low XP cost for upgrading them and high XP cost for buying new special moves effectively makes investing in the latter a crippling mistake, especially when they are so reliant on stats to scale (and this all before taking into account the fact that high stats are so gamebreaking that they invalidate the need for special moves in the first place !).
Add to the mix a slew of (fortunately only mildly inconvenient) bugs and you're left with a sweet and enjoyable short ride with a sadly fundamentally broken combat system. It's nothing that will taint your enjoyment of this otherwise competently made game too much, and it could easily be fixed in the next game of the developer (which makes me excited to follow their futur endeavor !) but as it stands Grimm's Hollow is nothing more than a side dish between bigger and better releases. A pretty tasty, if smelly, one, but still.
