Grimind

 PC
Metascore
tbd

No score yet - based on 2 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 2
  3. Negative: 2 out of 2
  1. DarkStation
    Apr 3, 2014
    20
    There was a promising idea here but nothing in the game came together to make for an interesting experience. Instead, I was left frustrated and underwhelmed as I tediously hopped from platform to platform, wondering if I’d live to see the next checkpoint or die trying, and shaking my head as the latter became true.
  2. DarkZero
    Jan 9, 2013
    30
    It's an ugly, uncomfortable game that fails in so many areas a platformer shouldn't.

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
6.2

Mixed or average reviews- based on 9 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 9
  3. Negative: 2 out of 9
  1. PublicNuisance
    Sep 5, 2020
    6
    Grimind had a lot of opportunity to be a good game. It had fantastic atmosphere; a mysterious story that I wanted to explore further; greatGrimind 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    … Full Review »
  2. runner
    Sep 18, 2016
    5
    Conclusion:
    +Captivating graphics
    +Good sound design +Good creepy atmosphere +Some good puzzles -Game mechanics can get relatively    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.

    After seeing that Grimind has only 3 bad reviews (at least at the time of writing this review) I'd like to stress that it's NOT THAT BAD. 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.    … Full Review »
  3. zekafonss
    Jun 19, 2014
    1
    Paweł Mogiła is probably the sloppiest game developer in history. Who has the nerve to release a game in such a despicable state?
    This game    Paweł Mogiła is probably the sloppiest game developer in history. Who has the nerve to release a game in such a despicable state?
    This game is abominable. As soon as you start the game, the first problem you will notice is the awkward broken English and laughable monologue. Everything about this game is painfully amateurish, the art style is hideous, and the sound effects are repulsive. Just to give you some examples, when you spend too long underwater you start hearing a man gulping water, it's absolutely ludicrous. The art style is not consistent, the backgrounds are stretched and blurry but the most pathetic of all is the grabbing animation which consists of 2 single frames.
    This guy failed miserably at everything but the level design which is decent for the most part. Avoid at all costs, even if you can get it for free.    … Full Review »
See all user reviews »