Goblins and Grottos

Reasonably high quality indie graphics, sound, and concept disguise a poorly coded frustrating mess. A classic example of a team of developers that doesn't understand the difference between challenge and difficulty. Don't be fooled by the slick trailer -- the story is thin on the ground and the voice acting is a straight-up misdirect. Half the time speech bubbles are triggered off screen where you can't even see them.

Seriously, who puts limited respawn checkpoints in a game like this? Half of the respawn locations are directly in the line of fire resulting in multiple deaths before I could move. The game seems alright but this is such a bad design choice I don't know if I'll be able to finish the thing.

Игра по сути платформа, где вы можете рисовать свои уровни и делать сложные головоломки, используя физику и рычаги. Мейн стори начинается невнятно, полно таких же невнятных шуток, предметы заястревающие в текстурах и убийства на респаунах... на уровнях есть места, где вы просто можете застрять и приходится перепроходить уровень заново просто на ровном месте. Goblins and Grottos больше для фанатов пикселей и уровнеделов, но на инди мягко говоря не тянет. Хотите крутого гоблина-лазутчика - сыграйте в Styx.

Highly recommended, with the spirit of the old Ghost and Goblins games but reversed. It has enjoyable physics dynamics and many ways to get out of a level past the heroes. A great Sunday afternoon game.

Loved it. It's puzzles are very fun and grow in complexity as the story progresses. The plot is also fun. I recommend taking your time to do the extra puzzles to find muffins that are not required to unlock the door to the next levels. I only wish the story campaign was longer.

[b]A difficult, and sometimes frustrating puzzle game that rewards you for keeping with it[/b] At a glance, this seems like an action game, with the usual script flipped and you're playing as a bad guy. Though the premise stays true to that, it is decidedly NOT an action game. This is 100% a puzzle platformer, and a pretty unique one at that. You traverse through a series of dungeons in an MMO. Your goal is to chase down some pay to win jerk who killed your father. Along the way you encounter many locked doors, platforms, and traps. This leads to many hidden paths and goodies for those who don't want to just stick to the basic path. The big selling point of the journey is that you can kill other heroes along the way. Being a puzzle game, most of this will be via traps; opening trap doors into spike pits, dropping boulders on their heads, and so on. But there's room for creativity, such as making them chase you into a bit, occasionally getting grenades to throw at them, and even making the idiots kill one another. It's satisfying every time you pull it off. However, there's one really frustrating aspect of the game that seems to turn it off to many people: the physics. While the controls are pretty tight, sometimes things can get screwy, like being crushed by boxes you push, the hit box not registering on wall or chain grabs, or just the enemy AI going insane and ruining your traps. It's not game breaking by any stretch, but these frustrations DO hold back the fun sometimes. If you like puzzle platformers, and are looking for one with a bit more of an action undertone, this is the one for you. Just be aware the game physics WILL piss you off sometimes. But at least the devs pretty consistently update it.

Certain levels were clearly not playtested enough, full of stuck spots with no option but to restart the whole map.

Watch my Bite Sized review on Youtube: https://youtu.be/D8swWSD_iC8 The game is a plaformer first and puzzler second with puzzles rarely going beyond moving an object from A to B or pulling a lever to open a new area. That in itself isn't a bad thing and the developer has gone a long way to mix things up as you progress through the levels, including transmutating the player into a goblin chicken, is that a Chicklen? Gobken? This all pretty much follows the humour of the game with NPCs having conversations about MMOs and bickering as you'd see in game chat of multiplayer games. It's light hearted and can take away the sting of rage and failure on some of the more tricky levels. That said seeing the same joke 20+ times may force you to smash your keyboard too. Graphically the pixel art style works well, animations are nice, bonus points for having the character wobble on the edge of the platforms! Woo! There is nice modern lighting effects and objects have physics which play into combat, puzzles and numerous deaths. Which is worth a mention, as you'll probably die a lot and the respawn system in the game (statue checkpoints) are sometimes infinite and sometimes just number in the lower digits. This means a particularly tricky section can result in you spawning further and further back. There is a level editor build into the game along with sharing functionality that lets you rate the user created maps and see a Complete/Rage Quit indicator similar to Mario Maker. This provides some extended longevity to the core game alonside the additional maps provided by the developer, although it should be noted there aren't a huge number of them. It's a nice addition to the game and mean if you end up being totally smitten with it there is no reason you can't make some tricky maps for yourself in the years to come. On the whole I'd say this is well worth a look if you enjoy platformers with some tricky precision jumping required. The physics can get in the way sometimes but it's not the end of the world. For those dedicated to the genre a full price purchase might be in order but I'd say the courious and casual amonst you would fare better picking it up on sale or inclusive of a bundle.

I wish Steam had a better rating system than just yes, or no. It's not a bad game by any means, I just personally wouldn't recommend it at it's current price. I got it as a gift for a friend, as it was on his wishlist and thought to give it a go myself. It's an ok little puzzly game, while I didn't find it funny, I could see that's what it was going for, some people might find it funny. But to be fully honest, it's not worth 9 pounds 99 pence. (12.79 dollars) (11.45 euros) And just for fun. (118,007.13 ZMK, which is a currency that no longer exists.) Not saying the game is worthless mind, but I just don't think I personally can justify 10 quid. The music is a bit repetative but not irritating. The controls are probably better designed for a gamepad, as with a keyboard I found my pinky was getting a good work out, Control and Shift being the two main keys, as opposed to perhaps E and C, which if I had played for longer I would probably have found a way to remap to those. The game is perhaps a little buggy but it's not unplayable. Just a few minor annoyances, which might not have actually been bugs. I couldn't really think of much to put in a review about such a simple game. So let's start with this. Goblin: a mischievous, ugly, dwarf-like creature of folklore. And: used to connect words of the same part of speech, clauses, or sentences, that are to be taken jointly. Grotto: a small picturesque cave, especially an artificial one in a park or garden. There were indeed multiple goblins, the cave however was very large, I think Goblins and Gigantic Caves would've been more accurate, but it doesn't sound as nice, doesn't roll off the tongue. How about Goblins and Grubby Gits who keep shooting fireballs at me. Again, doesn't sound as nice, it's a bit long, but it's definitely accurate! Goblins and Globetrotting. Goblins and Gobbos. Goblins and Gobbledygook. Goblins and Gadzooks! Which is what came to my mind when a level 1 human and a level 20 human were both one shot killing me. Goblins and Ganking. Goblins and Ghandi... It's clear that I've run out of ideas. Maybe I should stop here. Edit: Also, there were muffins. I don't remember treasure goblins or Styx stealing those, but I will be sure to keep an eye on my muffins from now on. The goblin mentioned a dislike for Gold, this seems odd for me, Goblins are generally gold loving. In pretty much everything, but if the developer of this wants a Goblin that hates gold, because adventurers like it, well, I guess that is fair enough to me.

To be honest I have not played a 2D platformer since my teens but this is such good fun! The speech from the characters is really funny but the levels really make you think.