Grimm's Folly

If you enjoy atmospheric puzzle games and don’t mind repetitive tasks, it might still be worth a shot. Imagine enjoying a peaceful day in the park when, out of nowhere, a portal drags you into a dark and unfamiliar world. That’s exactly what happens to Alex, the protagonist of this intriguing yet frustrating puzzle-adventure game. Your unfortunate fate is revealed through a cassette tape near the first lamppost: someone used you as a pawn to escape, swapping places with you. Now, you’re stranded outside a mysterious research facility, surrounded by multiple buildings, a towering structure at the center, and an impenetrable force field that not only traps you inside but also blocks out natural light. Thankfully, the game’s internal lighting is well-balanced, ensuring visibility without disrupting immersion, and you also have a trusty flashlight if needed. The game focuses on exploration and puzzle-solving, keeping controls minimalistic and accessible. You can move around, interact with key objects, and even toggle running—an appreciated quality-of-life feature that saves your fingers from fatigue. Your main objective is to navigate the facility, uncover its secrets, and ultimately find a way to escape. While the map isn’t overwhelmingly large, it’s cleverly designed with obstacles like fences and locked gates. Progress depends on managing the facility’s electricity system, a task that quickly turns into a tedious affair. Various levers redirect power through cables to doors or devices, requiring constant backtracking to flip the right switches. Unfortunately, there’s no visual indicator or feedback for these actions, meaning you often have to retrace your steps to check if anything changed. The frustration is compounded by the game’s underground sections—claustrophobic cave systems that are both visually dull and time-consuming to navigate. Worse yet, these areas are separated by loading screens, making the necessary back-and-forth traversal even more of a slog. While you can unlock shortcuts that remain open, the amount of legwork required can feel excessive. To aid navigation, the game employs a color-coded interaction system: red highlights key switches, levers, and doors; blue marks collectible items; and yellow signifies readable documents. While this system is helpful, some interactive elements—especially small levers—require you to be uncomfortably close before prompts appear. Once collected or written down, objects lose their glow, preventing unnecessary rechecking. The real letdown comes in the form of voice recordings scattered throughout the game. These cassette tapes provide lore, but their dialogue is delivered through eerily robotic, AI-generated voices. One of the game’s most unique mechanics is the ability to take control of a raven that follows you throughout the adventure. As a raven, you can fly over obstacles, scout unreachable areas, and participate in optional flying challenges. More importantly, you can spot collectible treasures—50 in total—though they are so poorly placed and dimly lit that finding them without sheer luck is nearly impossible. Even worse, only the raven can collect them, meaning you can stand right on top of one with human character and be unable to grab it. While the raven can serve as a pseudo-objective marker by resting near important locations, its most practical use is checking the effects of lever pulls without having to physically walk there. Unfortunately, this mechanic is hindered by frustrating limitations. Switching between human and raven characters results in loading screens if they’re on separate maps, making quick scouting pointless. If you accidentally swap back to your human form, the raven inconveniently resets to its designated resting spot, forcing you to travel through entire cave systems just to check something that can be done faster by walking. This game presents a fascinating premise and a solid foundation for puzzle-solving exploration, but its flaws outweigh its strengths. The raven mechanic is nice, but the tedious backtracking, lack of action feedback, and AI voices make for a frustrating experience. Also, if you’re into grabbing all achievements, the game has mutually exclusive achievements that force you to go through the game at least twice.

Still working through it at the moment but very good puzzles, atmosphere and actually has a story as well. This one caught me by surprise. You can check out my first 90 minutes of the game below to see if it's for you as well. Would recommend - plenty to do here (around 15-20 hours maybe of the game itself without a guide) and then there are time trial/challenges to do if you want as well. It has Achievements, cloud saves, works on Steamdeck well, has controller support. That said, it doesn't let you adjust keybinds currently or the sound levels - streamers bear in mind there is one track of copyright music you can't disable unless you mute the music entirely. On the keybinds, it sometimes asks you to left click to confirm, or Enter, or space bar - it's inconsistent with that sometimes. Would be nice to rebind it. Spring is also on '3' but it's a toggle thankfully so press it and leave it on! My first impressions of Grimm's Folly; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PccFU1UZsFY

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from https://www.keymailer.co The Good Its a good puzzle game Map spanning puzzles, though this can mean a bit of travel between points for one puzzle The story is a slow feed and not info dumped which is nice, Sounds are clear and distinct (though loud at the start) This game reminds me of Myst, It's story is fed slowly, the puzzles are both clear and hidden (so far), The graphics are distinct action points clearly marked, though what those do is anyones guess, The Bad 1 unescapable scene (again so far) at the start of the game (lasts about 40 seconds), The sound is at maximum and all sound levels are equal, I got blasted by the music on start up. Enter key is used to accept on screen notification - its the other end of the keyboard and somewhat of a disruption of play when on mouse and keyboard. Finally the unknown Does it work on steam deck? Simple answer is it appears to. For how long who can tell

I had fun playing this, its fun to fly the raven around and the puzzles can be hard. I haven't managed to complete it yet but so far its been hard/fun. You want something to twist your brain around this is it.

🌀🗑️ “One minute you’re chillin’, next thing you know—BAM—you’ve fallen through a wormhole and landed in a cosmic trash heap. Welcome to Grimm’s Folly, where everything’s weird, dark, and creepy, and some mysterious someone REALLY doesn’t want you to leave. It’s like being stuck in a nightmare escape room, but way cooler.” 👻🔒 ⭐ 5/5 — Highly recommended! It’s trippy, and tense, and keeps you on your toes. Just watch out… the trash might be the least scary part. 😈 👉 Check it out here: https://youtu.be/GaCvf_Ko6fw

interesting puzzles but it's very confusing if you don't pay a good attention to details, or if you are a clumsy like me. So far solid 7/10, I'll update my review when I play some more. But I am just a potato

Interessante Story, knackige Rätsel. Mit Zettel und Stift bewaffnet werde ich mich beim nächstenmal an dieses Spiel setzen. Wer gerne Rätsel macht die etwas schwerer sind, ist hier richtig.

Schon beim ersten Menübildschirm sieht man KI übersetzte völlig falsche Punkte. WIEDERGABE erinnert mich eher an Videorekorder als an SPIELEN oder STARTEN. Und bei AUSFAHRT denke ich an Autobahn und nicht an BEENDEN. Egal rein ins Spiel und zack schon im Vorspann schlecht übersetzte Texte, die falsch ausgesprochen werden von eine Sprach-KI. Die Grafik ist ein Witz und schlechter als jetzt schon 25 Jahre alte Spiele. Die Steuerung könnte besser justiert sein. Finger weg von dem Spiel, ihr werdet keinen Spass daran haben weil selbst das uralte Myst deutlich besser war. Ausserdem wurde hier massiv mit KI gearbeitet, aber nicht vermerkt. Verstoss gegen die Richtlinien von Steam.

La historia tiene pinta de poder ser realmente interesante, el gameplay no es nada del otro mundo PERO no es malo tampoco... Pero los dialogos hechos con TTS... Me sacaban totalmente de la experiencia. Prefiero tener que leer todo en textos que escuchar la voz robotica del TTS y sus entonaciones raras y carentes de vida. Por lo demás el juego es decente y aceptable para un juego de 15€ (12€ ahora mismo que está de rebaja) pero el TTS me hacía daño psíquico cada vez que hablaba un personaje. El cuervo el mejor personaje, quizá porque no habla hasta donde yo he llegado.

Juegazo de puzzles, además que sea en primera persona y no el típico de clickar para cambiar de habitación lo hace aún mas interesante. Si te gusta pensar, este es tu juego!! Mis más sinceras enhorabuenas al creador o creadores de este juego, Es un pasa!! 10 de 10