5. The Legend of Grimrock

Kit Goodliffe adds:
In an age when mainstream gaming is applying more and more action conventions to the RPG genre it’s exciting to see a game that focuses instead on exploration, mystery and complex character management. In addition, Grimrock restores the near dead grid based dungeon crawler genre and provides a refreshingly unique experience. The quantity of content offered coupled with the dungeon editor cements the status of Grimrock as the flag-bearer for its genre.

Bill Whorton adds:
Grimrock’s up there for me for a few reasons. First, it’s a genuinely good game.

Second, I have very fond memories of Eye of the Beholder from my youth, and Stonekeep, which was one of the better games Interplay released prior to going belly up. Grimrock really captures the style well without being needlessly “retro” (as I’m sure you know, kitsch is one of my pet peeves).

Third, there’s an active modding community that seems to be encouraged by the devs, so the game’s got a lot of legs. Nobody else has done a game like Grimrock, at least that I’m aware of, and the thing I like most about the way they did it is that it’s like a genuine update of the style, not just a nostalgic resurrection of an old game.

It really feels like they played the old dungeon crawlers and made a new game in the same vein with modern tools, not like they started out with the intent to make an old-looking game and picked EotB-style dungeon crawlers as the medium, if that makes sense. Like the difference between a PT Cruiser and someone rebuilding a Model T with modern parts (no offense to owners of PT Cruisers).

Read the original IGR review of Legend of Grimrock by Kit Goodliffe

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