Grimind

I wanted to like this game, I really really did, but after an hour I just can't take anymore. chapter 1: easy, get the basic mechanics down, great. Chapter two: mostly smooth until the light puzzle, where the answer is to put red in first then yellow. Chapter 3: stuck in the beginning of it for about 10 minutes, look up a guide on what to do, perform those actions to a T, still die.

I felt the platforming was done very well for what I could play of it. Our little buddy moves around easily, and can maneuver him around in the air as well, so there is some grace if you mess up when platforming.

However, the puzzles I could get to are basically trial and error are not fun, since I didn't feel accomplished for finally solving them through smarts, but because I kept bashing my head against the wall till something finally gave. Again, that's not fun.

Sometimes if a game is obtuse I'll still look up the ending to see if it'd be worth sticking it out. An hour of my time is all this game is getting with an ending like that.

If you really want to play it wait till it goes on sale for cheap, and look up the youtube channel "Indie Runner" if you get stuck, since they have a full series of videos covering every chapter of the game.

I had fun playing Grimind, in particular I liked the physics engine, the physics-based puzzles, and the dark atmosphere. The puzzles were just tough enough to be chalenging and entertaining. There are also enough respawn points not to set you back by too much when you die. I died 201 times before completing the game.

Not all was well with this game. The animations are decidedly below par. The physics engine is mostly good, but at time movement feels clunky. The dialogue is full of grammar mistakes. The game decidedly lacks polish.

There were a couple of bugs and one in particular was very annoying: The left stick is used for aiming, but the movement was completely off: pressing the stick up made the aim go left, pressing left made the aim go down, etc - completely unusable, so when playing with my controller I needed to grab my mouse whenever I needed to adjust my aim. In a couple of levels this made the fights with the monsters more difficult than it should have been but still quite manageable. I read in some of the negative reviews that the (boss) fights are considered too difficult because how poorly the character controls. However, this is not the case - if you keep getting killed by the monsters or boss in a particular place you need to come up with a better strategy to fight them. I managed to beat the final boss on my third try. Brute forcing your way through multiple enemies is not an option as your character is way too vulnerable.

Personally I believe this game had lots of potential but it simply just got boring. I enjoy puzzle type games but this one couldn't hold my attention.

Grimind had a lot of opportunity to be a good game. It had fantastic atmosphere; a mysterious story that I wanted to explore further; great music and some decent platforming. The controls; puzzles and enemies all made for an unenjoyable experience. You had to grab onto objects to drag them along and sometimes throw them and the controls for both were very clunky. It was hard to even know where to stand to grab an object because sometimes I was too close or too far. Throwing it was a best guess and sometimes I wouldn’t carry it just right and it would bounce away if it touched a rock. Some items would also explode if you ran into another object with them. There were also death traps that you could have no way of knowing about before hitting them , you were just expected to make a mental note for next time. This just reeks of a game wanting to call itself “hardcore” for making you die a lot when really it is just not due to lack of skill but an inevitable occurrence. If I die I want it to be because I screwed up or wasn’t good enough not because me going right before going left leads me to my death because the game wanted me to go left but doesn’t say so and encourages me to explore. There is little to no explanation at all for anything in game. It likes to say no hand holding but there is a line between hand holding and just doing things to pad the characters death count. Oh yeah, there’s a death count. It stares you in the face every time you load the game. The developer should have taken the time they took to make that counter and used in on the controls. To make matters worse the game not only uses an auto save system instead of a manual save system but it never tells you when it’s saving. I want to say it’s when you encounter lights shining but I have no idea. I know it saves at the start of each level but past that it’s a guess. The graphics are pretty poor as well. Even by hand drawn/pixel type games standards. The use of colour does a nice job of contrasting the dark setting but the details are still poor. I found the puzzles in the first few chapters alright but by chapter 4 they were getting annoying in how they were mostly guesswork in what the game wanted from me. Climbing ropes are also a chore as you can’t climb down only up. To go down I have to either drop down to the ground and start back up or I have to drop down and try to grab the area of rope I want to be at.

I played Grimind on Linux. When it says Ubuntu or Mint are the only supported distros it isn’t kidding. I have tried the game on Manjaro; and Solus and it crashes at launch on both. I tried using my Logitech F310 game pad but it wasn’t recognized. The game does only list partial controller support though. There are two settings for AA; a Vsync toggle and a resolution option but that is it. There are no other graphics options. The game saw my resolution as 3840x1080 when it should have been 1920x1080 but luckily it didn’t cause any issues. The game never crashed on me when on Linux Mint. The performance was silky smooth and always almost my max refresh rate. I’m not sure what graphics engine was used.

Disk Space Used: 148 MB
VRAM Usage: 478-618 MB
CPU Usage: 2-9 %
RAM Usage: 2.6-2.9 GB
Frame Rate: 136-144 FPS
Input Used: Keyboard + Mouse
Saves: Auto
Settings Used: AAx4; Vsync; @1920x1080
Game Version 1.0 or 10 (hard to read the text)

The only reason I’m giving the game as high a score as I am is because the music; story and atmosphere worked together to have some serious creepy vibes to it. I only paid $1.09 CAD for Grimind but unless you enjoy masochistic platformers then you probably won’t find much value even at that price. Not to mention any Linux users not using a Debian based distro need not apply (currently over 23% of Linux customers on Steam). I lasted just one hour 24 minutes before tapping out but that was enough to get to chapter 5 out of 16 in the game.

My Score: 6/10

My System:

AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 5700 XT Gaming X 8GB | Mesa 20.0.8 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Linux Mint 20 | Mate 1.24 | Kernel 5.4.0-45-generic | AOC G2460P @1920*1080 144hz

That's a cute little game. A bit old and with rough control, but still has some fun mechanics and the atmosphere.
That's a true old-school Indy game, so don't expect anything too exciting here.
Still it's worth at least one play through in my opinion. I definitely enjoyed it.

That's a cute little game. A bit old and with rough control, but still has some fun mechanics and the atmosphere.
That's a true old-school Indy game, so don't expect anything too exciting here.
Still it's worth at least one play through in my opinion. I definitely enjoyed it.

This game is so awful I cannot find the words to describe how bad it is.Maybe the worst game I ve played.

The game has a pretty good atmosphere, but it's really nothing you haven't seen before, and the occasional poor English grammer certainly doesn't help. Some of the puzzles can be pretty fun, but too often the controls feel slipperly, especially when you need to use the second analogue stick/mouse. The enemies have a pretty good simplistic design, and can vary from flexible to funny depending on context, but their unpredictable movements go from challenging to outright cheap, especially when they're spontaneously generated. Buy it when it's on sale, if at all.

A quirky but very enjoyable platformer experience. As my play time no doubt reveals, it doesn't take very long to get to the end of the game AND 100% completion. (There's a guide.. but it's much more rewarding if you just get yourself killed over and over until you find all the secrets.)

The English might be a bit off for some of the "dialogue" but that's okay as it didn't really feel offputting or hard to understand.

The puzzles, while few, are nicely done and if you're a fan of the Puzzle Platformer genre you'll probably enjoy the six or so hours you spend playing this.

All in all, would recommend.

Conclusion:
+Captivating graphics
+Good sound design
+Good creepy atmosphere
+Some good puzzles

-Game mechanics can get relatively tedious
-Story is very meh
-"Puzzles" that rely too much on platforming

Buy it on a massive sale if you really like indie-puzzle-platformers.

End of conclusion.

I'd start by saying that Grimind is by no means a bad or a terrible game. It's a somewhat interesting indie title, which is clearly not done with a massive amount of money, and I tried not to raise my expectations too high. And I didn't. But it still wasn't that good, and towards the end I just wanted it to end already. And that's not a good sign.

Grimind is supposedly a puzzle platformer, and there are plenty of puzzles indeed. Some are really good, but some are based more on the 'platformer' thingy and the game, meaning that it depends more on you're timing and pressing the right key at the right time, rather than you're puzzle-solving skills. The controls of Grimind were basically alright but not 100% fluid, and this fact together with some level-design decisions made me often get to a point of feeling nervous and irritated as I simply couldn't get through a certain section of the game, again and again and again... Until it stopped being and fun.

I could forgive this, though, but unfortunately there wasn't much to keep me intrigued and motivated to actually want to finish this game, aside for a slight curiosity about how the story would end, and my terrible tendency to finish whatever game I play even if I don't enjoy it.

So, I did finish the game, and unfortunately I didn't reach any satisfying conclusion to the game. Found out the I missed one secret and that finding all the secrets in the game would grant me an additional ending.
Went to look for that missing secret, made it to the ending again, and got an even less satisfying conclusion.

Grimind presents you questions and wanderings throughout the entire game but leaves you with no answers, no real conclusion, no real story.

So, unfortunately, awkward story + awkward gameplay equals not such a good experience.

And that's a shame, because Grimind does show potential, there were some entertaining moments, the game had a brilliant sound design which fit the creepy atmosphere, the graphics are very simple and yet captivating, dark and gloomy and yet colorful.

This indie title does have some good features and could be really enjoyable if it only wasn't getting so tedious as the game progresses. It is rather short though, so you could probably get it on a massive sale if you really like this type of things.

Fun little game. I've had this in my library for ages but only just got around to playing it through - I'd previously played the first level and thought it was alright, but perhaps something worth coming back to. Well, now I have. And I'm glad I did.

The graphics aren't great and the controls take some getting used to...but the sound design is excellent, and the puzzles are well put together, with plenty of variety - the game is always introducing new tricks and abilities to avoid repeating itself too much.

Despite the bad grammar and the lack of explanation, I really did end up feeling for the little guy...and the ending was kind of sad :(

I say no.
Grimind caught me because 3 things:
indie
platformer
style & story

Author of game tell us: ... and additionally discover what are you doing there alone – but is it certain... that you are there... alone.

So the most frustrating thing, that you will not discover that. Who you are, what are you doing there, where is exit. You don't need that. Jump, fight, run. The game generates even more questions and don't give answers.

Maybe not to bother and play only as platformer.
Level design is very poor. Just stupid dark tunnels. The level design will not change from beginning to the end. Even playing in the mind of creature, we can't find any difference with other levels.
Audio- same thing.

Last fight with friend -really аwful, frustrating thing.

All gamers, who expect a lot from a storyline, amazing indie, and horror story just pass by.There was a promising idea here but nothing in the game came together to make for an interesting experience. Only disappointment ending.

0/10

I hate platformers. Over 200 deaths. Frustrating. Pain in the ass. Tedious. On the plus side, there are frequent checkpoints so you don't have to start each level over from the beginning. The sounds and visuals are very cool. Very cool. The lighting is amazing. Regardless, I hate platformers and have no idea why I play them. If you like platformers then I highly recommend this game. I'm having difficulty recommending the game because it was so frustrating but it's advertised as a platformer so I suppose I should recommend it.

Pros: Sounds (not really music), lighting, unique platformer, frequent checkpoints.
Cons: It's a platformer so it's incredibly frustrating.

tldr; Challenging but rewarding puzzle game, I really enjoyed it and the story line. Pay attention, be curious, and you'll have a blast. I'd highly recommend this if you like puzzle games that aren't easy! It's great!

Fun game, very difficult puzzles in places but not ever impossible. I don't find myself getting truly frustrated most of the time, it's a lot of trial, error, death, and more trial. But the pace at which you achieve victory vs the time you spend dying on each puzzle feels nicely balanced, I only felt once or twice I had to stop and take a breather because of frustration, which is less than most other puzzle games I play.

The mechanics are intuitive and easy to learn, even as they quite often throughout the course of the game throw new mechanics at you to use on more and more difficult puzzles. And I really feel proud of myself when I finally beat a puzzle or learn to use a new mechanic.

The story line is pretty good too, considering puzzle platformers don't tend to have much in the way of plot, so that was a nice surprise. I really like the main character.

Grimind is the story of a creature lost in a darkened underworld. Without a single memory of his life or his place, the creature must navigate through a series of mysterious caves, strange mechanisms, and horrifying structures. Knowing he must remember to survive, he sets out to illuminate the darkness not just of the scary world around him, but of his very mind. In the immense darkness lurks something even more diabolical than simply not knowing who he is or what he is, for he is hunted. Red eyes and snarling screams echo off the cavern walls and pierce his very soul, shaking him to his core. Fear the dark, find relief in the light, and escaped the closing corners of your mind. Your Grimind.

a very fun and wierd game, very entertaining to play, it has pretty hard puzzles, and enemies, its great idea overall and i really recommend it, it has kind of a dark mood to it and its just great.

really fun game! watch me play it blind here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TohR_ADqLCg&feature=youtu.be

I don't even know what to write on this one. It's so fundamentally mediocre that I don't feel anything towards it either way. It's entirely lacking in fun but there's not really much frustration to be had either. The enemies are a bit unfair since any hit is basically instant death. The puzzles are often anti-puzzles or otherwise pointlessly obscure. The game's not too terribly long (~4 hours the first time through for me) and it does a lot of different things, I guess. The art style's alright, kind of reminds me of Knytt Underground to some extent. The game wants to be LIMBO, also, with the atmosphere. The problem is that the narration... uhh... is unnecessary, and on top of that badly translated. Kind of ruins the plot, it's supposed to be dark and depressing but I'm giggling too much at the bad grammar. Also the ending is pretty stupid, you die, the end, you can't not die, so yay. Hope you had fun. But you probably didn't. I'm mostly rambling because I don't have many organized thoughts on this game. It's a game that exists but has no reason to.

Bought this game for a mere 2.99 on sale.
For that price, it offered 5-6 hours gameplay and some replayability. It is an Indie game, and I will treat it as such.
The developer markets Grimind as a horror/physics puzzle game, and that is about as descriptive as it gets. The gameplay is centered around completing the puzzles without any instruction or hand-holding. Not to say the puzzles are unsolvably difficult, but there are a few moments in which I scratched my head in frustration and uttered a soft "what the hell do I do?" to my computer monitor. Once you get the feel of how the game operates, the puzzles start to become clear. The physics are also quite well done. I understand the developer reworked the inertia of objects and some other parameters for the game's Steam release, and the attention to detail shows. It seems more polished compared to early alpha footage (as one would expect). Objects can be picked up and thrown, liquids respond to disturbances, and soft-bodied pieces like vines move as they should.
The strong point of the game is the lighting. Beautifully done point lights and both "baked" and active shadow casting as well as ambient gloom in certain points lends to a strong setting for a horror scenario. Many levels throw the character into the darkness with nothing but a lit torch, and as everything in the environment is opaque black, one understands that death may be around every turn.
As for the "scare factor?" Some reviewers have thought the game is as frightening as Amnesia: The Dark Descent. That is not necessarily true. The scariest part of the game is the environment itself. The player is pursued by malevolent little--welll--boxes (with no animation) that may only be vanquished with bright light. The enemy design is unbecomingly bland for a game that seems so well-put-together in every other regard. The chase sequences get one's heart pounding, but it is not fear. The character animation is perhaps a little poor as well.
The sound work in the game is mixed. The background music/ambient noise are very impressive, and those elements are quite unsettling for the game. They chant at the player like spectral moans from an unknown source and never failed to cause my hair to stand on end. All other noises sound as though they were recorded by a desk mic in Audacity, like the growls of the monsters, drowning noises when underwater, and thunder of fallign boulders or objects. Their lack of quality just doesn't seem to fit, and they certainly didn't scare me.
Lastly, the game's story and dialogue were originally written in Polish. (I believe?) The English translation is rough around the edges, but I could understand what was being conveyed with a little bit of pidgin translation. The story begins with no scenario, and ends with little more. It was more depressing of an end than a satisfying resolution. Perhaps there is a metaphorical message to it all? Nonetheless, I would have preferred to see a more complete story. Maybe in the sequel we can see more character development.
I give this game 7.5/10. For what it was, I enjoyed every bit of it, but I also see room for polishing all around.

I wish I'd seen before I purchased that there was no gamepad support for Linux nor Mac.
Playing a platformer with WASD is not for me.

Godawful grabbing mechanic and floaty physics lead to a very fidgety and imprecise mess. It's hard for all the wrong reasons.