[i]This is the [b]16th[/b] review of the Steam Redlight series, a series where I purposely seek out negatively or controversially rated games on Steam to see if they're as bad as the Internet says they are. It's accompanied by a video review that can be found [b][url=https://youtu.be/LEDIbcYBBrE]here[/url][/b].[/i]
[b]In summary, I cannot recommend this game[/b], while it does have [b]some[/b] basic gameplay elements introduced for an open-world survival game, it doesn’t quite cross the threshold into justifying a price-point for a game that’s unfinished and no longer in development according to the developer’s post from August ‘19.
[h2]Introduction[/h2]
In Grimtale Island, you play as a nameless, faceless character on one of two islands - one named [i]Starter Island[/i] and the other named [i]Grimtale Island[/i]. I started off on the Starter Island to learn the core gameplay mechanics then moved onto Grimtale since that’s the title island. Once you’ve chosen your island, you’ll be spawned at a predetermined spawn location to start out your new life.
Since this is an open-world survival game, you’ll need to begin collecting materials to craft workspaces to progress through the tech tree. However, instead of punching trees and rocks to get resources, you’ll respectfully have to pick loose articles up off the ground, only getting the ability to farm rocks and trees with the appropriate tools later on. In addition to rock and wood you can expect to pick up other materials such as fiber and metal. There are some consumables, like food, found in bananas and apples; medicine, like med kits and rad pills; and ammunition, handgun magazines and single-rifle bullets.
Around the island there are three other lifeforms - bunnies and deer, which you can hunt and harvest for meat and fiber, and zombies - the only enemy that threatens your existence aside from the elements. In addition to zombies, you have to try to avoid the cold as well as keep yourself hydrated and fed using items you find around the island. If you explore enough, you may also find vehicles like LUVs, tanks that don’t fire ammo, and helicopters. Oddly enough, these vehicles are incapable of damaging wildlife and zombies -- you just bounce right off.
Lastly, there are several points of interest around Grimtale Island. There’s villages, small and large military outposts, a quarry, a destroyed city, and many other small locations that are lootable. There’s occasionally a robotic trader that you can find who will take rocks and wood [b]only[/b] in exchange for money, which you can use to buy ammo, weapon parts, and medicines. One thing you [b]won’t[/b] find on this island are tools or weapons, those are only obtainable through crafting.
Well, that’s about everything foundational to the game, so let’s move onto what I did like about Grimtale Island.
[h2]The Good[/h2]
The thing that I had liked most about Grimtale Island is the graphics -- regardless of whether or not they’re handcrafted or purchased assets. The environmental assets look great and nothing in the game reads like it’s a mish-mash of asset packs.
But unfortunately that’s about all I could enjoy, so let’s move into the ungood.
[h2]The Ungood[/h2]
So I typically start with smaller nuances and build up to what I think is the worst - so to start, I found the UI to be highly underdeveloped. It doesn’t convey limitations well and is pure text and numbers, which means you can’t visualize your inventory in any capacity. This also means that you can’t store multiple weapons or tools, with the latter being a real pain since your axe breaks after cutting down five trees or so. This led to me building a good dozen or so workbenches around the world just so I’d always have one with me.
Another item that chips away at the enjoyment is that there doesn’t seem to be any procedural generation, randomization, or regeneration. Now, my sample-size testing is limited to three plays, but I found the same items in the same locations in the same quantities. This isn’t the [i]worst[/i] thing, but this means your experience [b]will[/b] be the same every single time. This leads me to believe that loose materials have been put down by hand, which means you can only find rocks and wood near Points of Interest, which can test your patience if you have no tools to farm wood or rock and are in dire need.
Speaking of Points of Interest, we can segway into my third point which is the amount of underdeveloped Points of Interest. There’s several, but to call specific attention to three - the quarry, the military base, and the destroyed city -- these all are heavily lacking in lootable items, mobs, or decorative furniture. The quarry has no farmable rocks, which seems kinda [i]off[/i], the military base only really contains the helicopter yet spans like a couple hundred-thousand square feet, and the destroyed city, while looking busy and intimidating on the outside, has a dozen or so zombies and maybe two dozen items that are lootable out of the 20-odd something buildings. This is likely due to the development timeline, as these three locations are [i]really[/i] far away from the spawn, but it doesn’t take much to get there. While the closer locations are a little more fulfilling, this is also where I learned that you cannot interact with world-generated doors at all -- and with some doors [i]kinda open[/i] this leads to some interesting AI interaction.
The AI in this game is pretty basic - if a zombie sees you, it almost seems like they’ll follow you to the ends of the Earth. I’ve come across a conga line of zombies that likely followed me from one village and got stuck on terrain at some point and couldn’t break away, even though I hadn’t seen them for a half an hour. I’ve had some zombies follow me a good thousand feet or so away when I definitely broke line of sight. The zombies are also [b]very[/b] good at crowding around doors, but are without the ability of coming in if there are multiple coming in at an angle. If multiple zombies crowd around the door and you have no weapons and no means to make an axe, you’ll just have to die or restart your game. As an honorable mention, deer don’t run away when you shoot them. They just accept their death.
I try to keep it to six points, so to the short of my last point -- the game just isn’t finished. I don’t consider Grimtale Island to be in a finished state where it’s really enjoyable more-so than it being a memory of a passionate and hopeful developer that had an unfortunate hand dealt to them that paused development. If you haven’t read through the updates, the developer has unfortunately declared that Grimtale will no longer be able to be developed. This means that this state that it’s in [b]right now[/b] is its final state. There are some questions that arise from curiosity -- the developer posted the end of development news post in August of 2019 laying claim that it will end Early Access and be a free game. However, Early Access ended on November 27th [b]and[/b] the game currently costs 99 cents, and has for at least a whole year, save for sales which kicked it down to 89 cents, which happened twice in the last few months. While I can’t answer these questions, I think they’re important to consider if you’re thinking about purchasing this game.
[h2]The End[/h2]
edit: mfw the developer announces it's going back into development the day after i post this review: ʘ ͜ʖ ʘ
[i]If you’re into curator groups, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38757311/]we have one of those[/url]. Did you like this written review? Watch the video review which does have some different coverage not talked about here:[/i] https://youtu.be/LEDIbcYBBrE
