Picture in your mind a dark corridor with dreadful shadows cast all around you. A flickering torch is your only light source as you and your companions trudge along cautiously, searching the chipped cobblestones for a secret lever, door, or trap hole. The whole room is cramped, the sheen of dust along the dungeon floor is thick and choking, and in the distance you hear the rumblings of something sinister in the darkness….
The above is perhaps the best way to describe what it is like when playing a dungeon crawler. This sub-genre of roleplaying games is perhaps amongst the most famous of sub-genres in the gaming industry, dominating the PC market in the 1980s. From the legendary Wizardry series to the Gold Box classic Eye of the Beholder, from Might and Magic to The Black Onyx, the rich history of the genre is as old as gaming itself, but at the same time just as antiquated.
Sadly, the dungeon crawler is no longer in vogue; every so often we see a throwback or two, but for the most part, the genre has been relatively dormant and forgotten. But for the development team of Almost Human and their first official release, Legend of Grimrock, it is good to see that the classic formula truly never dies, but just finds a way to reimagine itself over and over.
Almost Human is a team comprised of developers who have worked on some big-name titles in the past, including Max Payne 2 and Alan Wake. Deciding to go a different direction, Almost Human focused their efforts on a strong indie title with old-school leanings; as a quartet of prisoners, your goal in Legend of Grimrock is simple: escape and survive the dungeon and win freedom back the hard way.
The game has you create a party of prisoners, each of them plunged into the abyss. Their party roles fall into the classic archetypes of a warrior, mage, or rogue. You also have four races to choose from, with humans being the jack-of-all-trades race, while the other three are competent in a specific class. A lot of the character customization is pretty decent, putting your base stats for your character up, and then leveling up proficiencies as you go. Want a warrior who likes using axes in combat? Pump points into his axe stat. Want a thief who throws daggers and grenades? Put points into his throwing stats. How about a fire mage with staff skill? Points galore in fire magic and staff proficiency.
This removes a lot of the complexity seen in dungeon crawlers, which is more of a positive than a negative. Streamlining character generation and levelling proficiencies doesn't lead to the massive analysis paralysis that can strike in more hardcore RPGs, and for a dungeon crawler, that simplicity is much appreciated to make most in-game actions easier to contend with. Of course, if you wish, you can skip the creation process and go through the dungeons with a predetermined party, but the beauty of role-playing like this is to strike the right balance of character classes to survive the dungeon’s deadly denizens.
Even though it's basic, it is nice to see that the choices of the player are also not instantaneous. Using spells, for example, requires you to level up a specific type of magic and find a scroll to unlock the spell, making your mage characters powerful over time, instead of being equipped with spells at level one. Other passive benefits are also gained as you level up, including +5 to your health or mana points, or a massive +25 boost to frost resistance, and so forth. And since you only get 4 points per level gained, distributing them to a character's skill set is a crucial skill to master. It doesn't stymie you with too many options, and it still has depth despite the streamlining.
The core of the experience involved in Legend of Grimrock is seen in a first-person perspective on a grid-based system. You traverse the corridors of the dungeon and use whatever weapons or tools you find as your only defense against the numerous monsters and traps that litter the world. Because everything is grid-based and in real time, there is a fair amount of action that can occur on-screen by enemies attacking on all sides, making Legend of Grimrock a fast-paced, yet strategic affair.
The game also has a great emphasis on exploration and puzzles, which are very enjoyable. Some of the puzzles were admittedly very simple, like finding hidden switches and figuring out a riddle or two. Others required a lot of time and effort to succeed, locating hidden switches, levers, torches, and pressure plates, and some even required you to take a leap of faith and fall into a trap door. Now that is commitment.
If there is one type of puzzle that is a bit of a misstep in Legend of Grimrock, it would be the reflex puzzles. Some puzzles require you to be precise and perfect with things like aiming and running to continue going forward, and worse still, they have inconsistencies with their difficulty. Some of the early ones were really easy, while others required you to do several things in sequence to continue the game. While few and far between, the existence of reflex-like challenges probably led to the most deaths while playing, which made Legend of Grimrock somewhat frustrating after sixteen tries at something you know the solution to, but just aren't fast enough to finish.
In truth, I’m just thankful that puzzles exist in the game. It is rare to see an RPG utilize your wits as much as your skills at party building while playing a game. In fact, solving the puzzles leads to greater rewards, new equipment, experience, and even buried treasure that you can find in the dark halls of the dungeon. Who knows where some of the few dozen missed secret rooms were during the whole adventure, and if anything, it gives me incentive to play it again to find out what you missed.
Legend of Grimrock is a linear experience, meaning you will always find the fire spell past the same locked door, you will always have to fight a skeleton centurion behind a hidden wall, and you will always have the same secrets and hideaways to contend with after the game is finished. Outside of finding missing secret rooms, you will have to contend with the repetition of the dungeon crawl. This is a hallmark of the genre, but it is also one that is fairly outdated nowadays, thanks to the influx of rogue-likes on the market.
That said, Legend of Grimrock is a rather short experience for a dungeon crawler. I was able to beat the game and find a majority of its treasures in under 14 hours. There are also rather frustrating spikes in difficulty. Certain monsters, for example, will leave a party decimated after a long sequence of puzzles or previous encounters right before a big battle, making the game cross a few times into the territory of pure unfairness.
One of the nicer touches Almost Human put into Legend of Grimrock is their slick aesthetic design. From the static artwork and portrait designs to some beautiful still shots acting as cut-scenes. The game just looks the part of a dungeon crawler, with a wholly modern twist by using updated graphics and dynamic lighting. Legend of Grimrock also has really good sound design. While the music in-game is very limited, the sound effects actually enhance the dungeon-crawling experience; hearing shuffling in the dark and the creaking of doors opening gives the game a rich atmosphere that would otherwise be lost. It is the kind of sound effect that survival horror titles use to give the game ambiance, and it works just as well in representing the unknown here.
Ultimately, Legend of Grimrock is a nostalgic throwback, and Almost Human should get credit for the job well done in recapturing the magic of the 1980s. It certainly is unapologetic about the type of audience it will serve; for old-school RPG fans pining for something that is not a roguelike, it should definitely check this one out. The slower pace and emphasis on puzzle solving may actually be an asset for those looking for that old-school feel, for this is one dungeon that is worth traversing in the end, even if it is a one-time adventure.
Author's Note: This review was originally written for Blistered Thumbs back in 2012. It has been edited from its original form and posted here for preservation.