Game Thoughts - Grimm's Hollow by ghosthunter

Note: This is a repost from our WordPress, which we don't update anymore.

What's It All About?

In this game, you play as Lavender, who wakes up surrounded by mysterious people in hoodies and masks, throwing a party for her with balloons. It turns out that she's dead and has become a new reaper, seeing that her spirit was too weak to pass on. She gets scared by the revelation, and in her panic, becomes worried about her younger brother...

And so you venture forth to try looking for him.

Writing

We didn't really realize that it was a short game and kind of thought we'd be meeting more people, but here we are, with a tiny cast of pretty much four characters. To be specific: Lavender, Timmy, Grimm, and Baker.

And despite the length of the game, they are well-developed, down to dynamics between each other and their motivations for doing certain things. Yes, this applies to even Lavender, the main character, not making her a player surrogate, although you do have some say on how her fate turns out by the end of the game.

I like how the story progresses in the game, even though it can be rather quick if you're like us, who thought it was a longer game. And I also like how it feels complete despite the short length. Every single one of the endings doesn't leave you hanging. Actually, the whole story doesn't leave you hanging. It's practically a filling bite-size meal, if we're going to describe it food-wise.

More than the story, though, what really got me was the worldbuilding in this game. It's just a short game, but the world is just so tight. Pretty much all the elements are solid, without the need for a big infodump.

Art

The art is a nice dark, pastel pixel style for the most part, with a bit of a sketchy painted look in cutscenes. Even the enemies are cute, but with the right touch of spooky. Very fitting for the game and what part of the world we see.

Audio

The background music is charming and doesn't make you tired of listening to it. In fact, I actually enjoy listening to it. We enjoy listening to it.

The sound effects are also nice, although the one for the evade sequence scares me a bit.

Gameplay

Only using the directional buttons, Z, and X for both exploration and battle makes the whole playing experience pretty simple, and using timed presses for attacks and evasion makes for an interesting twist on the battle system.

My only gripe with battle is that it can be a little hard to know which enemy you're aiming at, and you might find yourself panicking as the enemies try to attack you. Oh right, and it's kind of hard to evade attacks. In Akkun's playthrough, he had only ever done it once.

Exploration is linear in the sense that the locations you can visit open up one at a time. However, you can revisit caves that you've been to before and fight enemies again. Also, while there is only one real path to the end of each location, there are a lot of branches and secret spots that can keep you busy.

Although, really, if you're going to grind, it's best to do it in the later spots, since the enemies give out more spirit points then. And believe me, not even the grinding in this game serves as filler for time. Unless you've been challenging yourself or something, you will build Lavender up quickly.

Speaking of spirit points, it's interesting that they act as both stat points and money, and what's even more interesting about it is that it's very in line with how the world of the game works.

The game has multiple endings, but they're not too frustrating to get, since they only depend on two factors, which I will not really describe here, and you can save pretty much anywhere. So you can like, save before the final battle and then get the endings. By the way the game notes how many endings you got, so you might want to get them all (and cry) just for completion's sake.

And don't worry if you're not too skilled, especially since the battle system is kind of skill-based... You get a choice of easy or normal at the start of the game, and normal is actually kind of okay, even.

Overall

It's a cute and short game that, despite its adorable aesthetic and minimal length, manages to convey quite a few thoughts on life, death, and trusting others. The endings bring replay value, tears, and a sense of "damn, we should make the most of life and company while we're alive."

By the way, if you guys wanna play it, you can get it from RPGMaker.net, Itch.io, Game Jolt, or Steam. - Kochi