Grimmwood - They Come at Night

idk why some of these idiots are still posting positive reviews, but this game is literally completely dead and completely unplayable and the devs just complete abandoned it with no warning, the servers you need to access to play it are down and have been down for years now.

Grimwood was abandoned.
The devs took the servers down and there's no way to host your own. Don't buy it.

Game is abandoned, yet steam still selling....Requested refund from Steam, since they partnered with Dev's to sell a game that can be "turned off", and was given canned response. This makes me more angry with Steam than anything.

You will not be able to play it. Literally. It's not starting. It is dead, and will stay dead.

Great little game but the servers are dead do not buy.

Game is dead, Do not buy. For 3 or more days i cant connect to the server and no words from the dev!

EDIT 2; Forget edit 1. I so wanted this game to still succeed, but the servers are now still shut down. Don't bother. Maybe go get die2nite instead. I'll never post anything back on this game, don't get it, but feel free to read everything else.

EDIT 1; after a month of shut down, the servers are back online ! It would be ok to try the game now, but feel free to read the rest of the review. The game will still receive no updates though and might still lag a bit. I'm now happy though to change my review to a positive one Happy Grimmvest


This game is really good, but only a niche of person will appreciate all of his art. It was an awesome experience to play with in cooperation with some people and you can read other reviews for a more descriptive gameplay experience, because I'll keep this short.

Sadly, the game has been abandoned. It's been more than 3 days (to this date) that we can't even play it.

So sadly, it's a no go.

BMG (game creators) said that there might be a small chance that Grimmwood is still worked in the future, but don't rely on it.

As I said, this game is an awesome game, but not everyone would like it.
Right now though, DO NOT BUY IT.

If you are still feeling curious about this game though, please follow it for further developpement, but please...

DON'T GET THIS GAME (lot of lag (when you can play it) anyway

Nice Artwork and Exceptional roleplay theme,
multiplayer villagers comes together to survive yet another night.
Great loading up short movie on the prologue.

Some flaws here and there.
The much disliked ' regenerating Stamina '.
Chance are too heavily stacked against the lone stranger(s).
Chatbox badly placed, an Obtruction to the environment.
Too much unnecessary mouseclickings, helpful if there are keybinds or shortcuts.

Believed most newcomers, rolled a new character traits few times, entering the lands only to regret not doing enough research and studies of the game first.

Game is not for everyone, or to say 85% and above of the Steam Community.
Requires exceptional dedication and commitment,
willing Teamplayer with a heavy sense of followership or leadership.
Failure and death is a matter of time without sheer luck, cooperation,
initiative in considerating for yourself as well as for the other villagers.
Zero room for Selfishness or the Self-centered.

Work together or Dies together.

*Note*
Steer clear of Dictating gangs, especially Russian hiding behind their inner chat circle, unfriendly to outsiders,
overpowering cast of vote when deem a threat to their activities.
Notable are ones called Tander, Warten and his gang of backstabbers.


Would recommend, but doubt you would have the patience for it.
Too tough and little leniency, bound to takes a dent to the product sale.

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15th March 2019

* Take Heed, news of Development Team disbanding.

DO NOT BUY THE GAME at the current state and lack of official news.
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Game Server is DOWN and CLOSED since.

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11th April 2019.

Server returned in service.
Game is still hopeless, petty community, still a dying game.
Just struggling to clear a few achievements and call it dead.


Not recommended to try, if haven't purchased.

I like the idea of really getting people together to be the most effective.
Start communicating in chat, share contacts and build a decent circle of friends and peers, just like the global village we live in.
It's great to have a fun convo and all of a sudden one player gets in trouble and you all go to help him.
Or to lead or be a part of 5+ villagers party that marches strong through the tiles.
Don't be afraid to scout for PoI's on unscouted tiles; there's a big chance to find great loot early in the game.

As much a game as it is a social experiment. A title that will appeal to people that want to communicate and organize their moves and strategies. Grimmwood makes you constantly to try and find optimal ways to spent you given moves (stamina points) every single day because it's not only about yourself. If you play casually and without giving much attention you hold back another 30-40 people. It is cooperative in all aspects. It's really interesting how each 'profession' alters your gameplay. You will have a completely different game experience with each profession you choose and there are many of those (Woodsman, Herbalist, Scout, Crafter, Hauler, Warrior just to name a few). I'm mostly the single player type but i can't deny that this game stirred up emotions that i would never expect to feel while playing a video game. After all it is kind of sad to speak with a person almost daily for two weeks and suddenly you lose all (in-game) communication because he/she (or yourself) dies.

A beautiful game with great potential (and a wonderful intro with great art style) but rocky gameplay that feels more like spreadsheet management that is hard to get into, with lots of waiting around and twiddling your thumbs and more RNG than strategy otherwise, further hampered by a low population, bugs and connectivity issues.

Very unrewarding, kind of a detached experience, if you're a solo player getting matched with random people (who might not be online when you are) it feels like a solo experience, everything feels like dry numbers like managing logs or a spreadsheet.
Even the dreaded night attack basically comes down to comparing two numbers – Defense value versus Attack strength. Guarding the village, crafting and improving the defenses just improves the numbers.
There's a bit of basic narrative descriptions you get in text boxes trying to liven up the dry numbers' game but if you're in Blitz mode you're probably too busy navigating mini-menus to see it.

This game kind of bored me, I'm sorry to say, and I'm the kind of monster that can enjoy avid D&D character sheet building so that's saying something.

I wish the Devs luck with it and hope they find more ways to make it more fun and interesting in the future.

This game plays very different from other.
What you need here is commitment, and not just for some hours, no.
You play max 1h per day, but on a daily basis for 1-3 weeks per village, depending on how your village is accomplishing things.
This game forces you to coordinate and cooperate with others. And not just cooperation with 5 people, there are 40 people in one village and without a good structure everything goes to hell ;)

It really feels like a simulation, where every person is a small but important part of the village.
I have felt regret/pleasure/commitment/trust/betrayal/friendship etc. in that month I have played this game due to the relationships with my villagers.

All in all this is more of a social experiment than a fully fledged out game, and it works!

A game with great potential. The Devs make content periodically. I just regret that there is no evolution of the character between the first day and the last (sometimes it's the same day for some) if we exclude stuff. Maybe a system of leveling in what you do (like the elder scroll or another system) would create more attachment to the character you are playing. Currently i feel like i'm attached to my fellow villagers and to my town but not really in my avatar itself.

Nonetheless, if you like cooperative game come and join us.

As a veteran of Die2Night project I am fond of the concept of group survival.
The main idea behind a group survival is communication.
Grimmwood has extremely outdated communication system - the chat and information desks are organized by 18 years old standarts. Seems that authors never seen a modern chat.
The main problem that players have to overcome is how to communicate each other and the group.
It is supposed that we would team together in Grimmwood against hostile odds but it turns out that the most hostile is ingame chat system. Unexpectedly.
When you die you lose all (!!!) connections with people from the Village and Village history. It is extremely frustrating. Really.

TL:DR Game released too early, wait for post release patches to see what improvements are made.

I didn't enjoy my time in the game but I didn't hate it. The core mechanic and game design is interesting. But I won't be recommending this to any of my friends. As with so many games, its not really one big flaw but just an aggregate of small, odd design choices that add up. Probably the only issue that could come close to being a core problem is that when your game is designed around player collaboration, if you don't provide enough tools to organize it rapidly falls apart.

When you luck out with a cooperative team, the division of labor and goal setting when tied with the exploration and mob control works. But it works in spite of some terrible UI and lack of key supporting features. To summarize the UI problems, the most grating is that to move into a tile that is occupied by a teammate I have to minimze the chat window to click the OK button. Or when searching a tile, it is displayed as a hex while your search area is a circle. How that one happened baffles me. There are so many little problems that should have been caught in pre-release play testing and will hopefully be resolved with patches.

For gameplay issues, so much in game informaiton is either hidden or requires significant player initiative to keep track of. There are far too many numerical and descriptive values througout the game that make it almost impossible to figure out what's going on under the hood. Take for instance the key part of the game, the town defense. Practically every game I've played, my team argues over the order of building and what to build because there's almost no way to definitively say which approach is best. Its unclear how the order of battle resolves and the after battle breakdown throws numbers at you with no easy way analyze what you need to do next.

Lastly, the player collaboration part of the game is in need of significant reassessment. The majority of my games in the blitz mode fail because each game session drags on to 2+ hours. Just when you need all players on hand, pure time attrition makes it impossible to continue. Ultimately the way the game is currently designed and balanced, you are most likely going to lose your settlement not because of the game but because there's no one left to defend. As of now, the later games don't allow new players to join. Or if they can, I haven't seen it.

If you like Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, Prison Architect, or other games where you manage a bunch of actors to accomplish goals and ever have wondered what it would be like to be one of the actors, this game is a pretty excellent depiction of that. You will encounter players who don't speak your language, players who don't read chat, players who are not open to communicating or working with you because they want to learn at their own pace rather than being taught, players who waste everyone's time by wasting resources, and players who instantly label you as toxic because you communicate differently from their natural style of communication.

Here's the primary thing: to properly enjoy this game, you can't be too selfish with your time and you need to be curious. You should want to find out as much as you can about the game, to inform yourself, to help your teammates, and to be a positive contribution to the community of survivors that you join. If you're used to games that you can just pick up and run with, and learn on the fly, you're going to impede the efforts of your team even if you find a team of people that are completely willing to teach you because the time they spend teaching you can be spent gathering, crafting, or otherwise moving the village forward; you need to be generous with your time and view reading the wiki and asking questions in Discord as an investment in the success of your future in the games you play.

But here's the upshot: you WILL find people that you click with and if you add them as a friend on Steam, you basically get a VIP invite to any game they're in. As you play, you encounter more people you click with, until you develop a critical mass of players that you can enjoy playing with and who have the same goals and playstyle as you. It's no different than playing Overwatch in that fashion - if you don't put in the time to learn the game and stick it out to find your group, you're gonna have a bad time.

There is a "Standard" mode which runs at real-time: every night, at midnight, server-time, the village is attacked and you have to pick up the pieces in the morning. It is the best mode to learn on if you learn socially; you have plenty of time to ask questions, communicate, and coordinate with other players before you take even the simplest actions such as moving.

The other mode is "Blitz", which runs at a vastly accelerated time scale: every day in-game is fifteen minutes in real life. You essentially need voice communication to be truly competitive in this game mode (there are leaderboards for both modes), and this is the mode you play when you're done for the day on Standard. If you learn by doing and failing and doing again, play Blitz and do not join a Standard game until you have the basic mechanics and priorities learned.

Be advised that there is a thing called "banishment" (accessible in the town hall) that prevents the banished player from being able to do much of anything until their banishment vote is resolved one way or another. If you grief, verbally abuse other players, or otherwise make yourself a nuisance, the village will banish you and you will be killed / leave the game at the end of the day. Be polite, be reasonable, and communicate. Not everyone will instantly be to your liking but if you aren't the sort of person to throw punches or get salty if a person breathes too loudly near you, you should be just fine.

Come play - but read the wiki first!

Overall a very good game and worth the pick up where it is right now be sure to use the tutorials but i do have some suggestions. Which i will start with then a smaller review at the end.

- Eating and Drinking , they are a frequent task that much be dont but with no way to quickly do them besides opening my inventory clicking on each item and clicking use. Id love to have a key bind or even setting to consume and drink or auto consume and drink when im below a threshold. Its just a quality of life change that reduces downtime especially in blitz mode where things need to get done.

- Night Attacks , Id love if more was written in this area, it feels a bit bland in seeing ok the wall took dmg and the gate took dmg. Maybe add some writing of what monsters attacked and make the defense a bit more scenematic, as for the wall , i dont know if i missed it but i cant see its overall health, maybe while including numbers also include how the wall looks "The Wall has a few notches in its beams but stands strong and tall"/ "The wall barely hold it can not suffer too many more hits"

Stamina - So this is a controversal topic as i understand the reasoning for giving such low gain but also the reasoning for out crys of people not able to play the game very long. In my opinion i think roles should be more enforced to force a level of coperation and make players feel like they matter. So a scavenger and traveller should suffer extremely minimal stamina degregation when scouting more so than already but in tasks like crafting it can eat up alot of stamina. This prolongs someones usuability for the time they play. As for stamina regen, making a player sit and wait for a bar to fill up is just boring , make a tavern area, put down some tables and have town members play some cards against each other, pay some ol folk poker and wager that extra bear potion you had , let the community bond with each other and let everyones names get out there. In blitz this is not a good idea but in blitz stamina really isnt an issue. Playing these games should accelerate stamina recover and i mean litteraly have it increase stamina regen while playing.

Monsters - Combat can use more text but its okay , Why not have them move closer to base as time carries on. When they sit there its leave a few organized groups to deal with them whenever but instead every 12 hours have them move a tile closer and if they make it to the village they will bolster the monsters night attack. This forces tehm to be a threat needing to be dealt with instead of a static enemy.

Love the game idea aswell aswell as the implementation. Id say the game is perfectly fine for its price and content for release. A notice to players who arent a fan of the original mode (24 hours a cycle) blitz mode does a great job of removing any down time in playing and provides a more casual yet somewhat more intensive game. With night in 15 minutes you have to work fast and decide what you want to do as soon as that day starts. In my city someone declared themselves as leader and 3 minutes before every night phase posted a note for all villagers to see on tasks we needed to do the next day. Of course not everyone is going to communicate but i strongly urge that you do not buy the game if you believe it can be done on your own.

While the game is clearly still in its infancy, it's still an enjoyable social experience with a surprising degree of depth to it. While its core mechanics are based on a game called "die2night" from what I understand, I had never played that, so this is my first experience in a game of this format.

The aesthetic comes through very strongly; the music and the art really complement the mechanics, making for a very immersive experience from what is basically a browser-based game on steroids.

15 bucks seems like a bit much for this game though; I fear that this will limit its longevity, especially given that this game relies on having a sizeable player base.

It took me about 30 minutes of play time going in completely blind to pick up the fundamentals of the game, and every few hours of gameplay I discover some new mechanic or some new nuance that I need to explore to get a full grasp of the game. The interface isn't super user-friendly, but it isn't so obtuse as to be annoying; my main gripe with it is that there are no hotkeys so you're stuck with a lot of clicking.

So far my experience with the community has been very positive; a good mixture of light RP and cooperation, though I anticipate in the "standard" length game I'm currently in, once things grow a bit more dire, conflict may grow.

I wish that there was an intermediary mode between the current "standard" length and the new "blitz" mode; in standard length matches, things occur in real-time, meaning that it is a very slow-paced game that only needs to be logged into once or twice a day. Blitz however has days taking only 15 minutes, meaning that, between juggling stamina, thirst, and hunger, it's nearly impossible to get done what you want to do. I think a mode with 30 minute days or perhaps hour long days would be optimal, but I really like the slow-paced asynchronous aspect of "standard" play, and especially enjoy the social angle.

I find myself strangely emotionally invested in the Standard game I'm currently in, and have so far immensely enjoyed my time in the Grimmwood. A very unique experience (other than the aforementioned Die2Nite). While I have concerns for the long-term health for the game, I would highly recommend grabbing it if it's on sale or if you're looking for a slow-paced, unique multiplayer experience.

Started the game. Went outside the village, got some fish and meat. Ran out of stamina. Went back. In the next 24 hours I spent my stamina on building and crafting. That is it. 1,5 hours of gameplay.

It is a nice idea but the game is unrewarding. You are encouraged to do basically nothing and can\will be punished for taking actions. Interesting but not fun. Because at the start I had 270 stamina and spent it in 10 mins. But your stamina regenerates for like 10 in a hour. So you need to do nothing for a day to be able to do something for 10 minutes...

My first impressions here: https://youtu.be/btRvofsOcXQ

This game is interesting. Not sure what the longevity would be but its forsure a great way to burn some time. It's pretty simple so makes it pretty easy to get into; but I can see where poor teamwork and communication could be everyone downfall. The game I was in everyone(that spoke english) was friendly and answered any questions I had.

The game is focused around your stamina and everything you do takes stamina. There are two game-modes normal and blitz:

Normal -- is a 24 hour clock where you use the whole day to build your towns defences then defend at night.
Blitz -- Is the same as normal but a 15 minute day timer, in thus your hunger and thirst go down a lot faster.

Stamina is only gained at night from what I understand so not sure how the Normal game-mode would work. In blitz I had 300 stamina each day, some actions take 1 some can take 4 or 5 ish.

My one issue would be I didn't see an option to make private towns. This would be a great game for a community. But other than that I would recommend this game if you want something more than an idle clicker to burn time.

So far, on my first town on the standard play, the experience has been great thus far.

I'm a scout. As a scout my job is to reveal areas on the map and points of interests such as hunting grounds, fishing areas, and woods that can be farmed for resources as well as occasionally finding loot from chests and dead bandits. You spend Stamina Points for each action you take including moving from hex to hex on the map, crafting items, and scouting locations. As a scout 'class' I used far less Stamina Points to scout than other characters so I took it upon myself to scout areas on the map that had many points of interest within. I also let other players know not to waste their precious Stamina Points on scouting until I have finished doing so myself, so they can focus on other tasks that might be available to them.

Once my Stamina points were all exhausted from scouting, I was able to use a potion in my intentory to restore my stamina back to full, an item given to scouts. So I was able to then continue scouting the map, revealing a lot of locations before running low in SP. Then I parked myself in the village to act as a hauler or bring things to people stuck on the map due to low SP.

Only one 'griefer' I ever encountered and it was not impactful enough to disrupt the town in any way at all. The desire to play the game as it was meant far outweighs any attempt to try and grief the town as far as I can tell. There were many new players understandably but I had no problem answering the occassional question. I mean we are all there to help each other in a single goal and that's what I really liked about this title so far. It favors cooperation with random people and to find the niche you are best at with the character you make.

I'm excited to keep playing and see where this all goes. This game is not for everyone. It is for those people who really enjoy cooperative play, being able to fulfill specific jobs needed for the benefit of all. If you want to feel purpose and helpful to a group of players all working towards survival and defense, this game is a great start. I can't wait to see the improvements that might be made to this game. As it stand, it's very well thoughtout and functional, the UI is clear and understandable, and the gameplay has enough variety depending on what character you roll.

I give it a 7.5/10 overall, great cooperative game with room for improvement.

Very interesting concept and the parts that are there are very nicely implemented, but there is VERY little content and features that I would consider required for a game like this are missing. The game for instance gives little to no feedback on why actions have the effects they do, so when something counter-intuitive happens there is no way of telling why or how to do it right.

I love the direction Grimmwood goes in.

To sum things up, it's essentially a community-based game, where you and the others all work together to defend a town. This happens either on an actual 24-hour cycle, or a faster one (blitz mode.)

You have a pool of stamina that you use to scavenge, explore, fight, etc. This, I both love and hate. I love it, because I can spend a little time on the game, then do something else. Always coming back to the game to help out and see what's going on in the world that I'm helping build and keep alive. But I also hate it because when I 'want' to do more, I can't! Unless, I use items to restore my stamina faster, but then that's being selfish and not helping the community (Unless we need a particular resource at that time.)

This game will NOT be for everyone, but if you want a community-centric game, where you at least loosely remember the names of the players you're working with, and all strive to make your server last, then this is for you.

The game's theme is dark, set in a fantasy 1600s and if the name wasn't evident enough, it's dripping with Grimdark.

I'm very-much looking forward to see what the devs do with the game, and what happens with the game on the story and lore front.

Also, I feel the price is totally worth it. I bought it at $13.49 with 10% off at launch.

Grimmwood is a cooperative survival game where players are tasked to manage their 17th century village in an increasingly hostile haunted forest, under the growing pressure of dwindling resources. Player characters are given random traits and starting equipment. Death is permanent and comes swiftly with the first mistake, forcing cooperation for long-term survival. There is no player-versus-player, and the uncooperative may find themselves banished beyond the walls, at the mercy of the wild.

The game is divided into twenty-four hour real time turns, ending with nightfall and a summary of the day's events. Forty players inhabit the village, with gameplay being similar to a tabletop rpg. For those who wish for a more hands-on approach, a fifteen minute day, ten player “Blitz” mode is present, with games typically lasting a few hours.

The villagers are free to scout, scavenge, and fight on the world map, limited only by their energy and carry weight. While in the village, the players can craft, build defenses, and take various night actions that lead to boons provided they survive the night. Grimmwood also supports an in-town forum, useful for drawing up plans or voicing grievances.

Overall this game does something unique that I've been looking for a long time. If you're interested in a dark world where the world itself is a threat greater than the players, then look no further than Grimmwood.