If you are a fan of old-school dungeon crawling games like Eye of the Beholder or Lands of Lore, you may already be aware of Legend of Grimrock. But what you may not know is that the first game in the Grimrock series has now been released on the Nintendo Switch eShop.
That’s right! The 2012 dungeon crawling RPG has been faithfully ported to the Nintendo 12 years after its initial release. After garnering a cult following on PC, the developers released an iPad port, but there has been no proper console release until now.
Grimrock Setting
In the game, the player controls a party of four prisoners who have been exiled to Mount Grimrock. If they hope to ever see daylight again, they must survive and through a vast network of tunnels, level by level. The game features some incredibly difficult combat and puzzles, but it’s not overly punishing.
Be prepared for thousands of squares to explore with hidden switches, pressure plates, secret doors, traps galore, and much more. Your four prisoners are all customizable with different races, classes, and traits, so you can build the party that you want to play. The magic system relies on runes and you can craft potions with various herbs you’ll find along the way.
Grimrock retains its oldschool appeal as a grid-based dungeon crawler, but it also delivers some modern features. With the Switch port, the UI has been reconfigured to work with Joy-Cons.
Why Now?
The founder of developer Almost Human seems interested in rekindling the franchise. Legend of Grimrock 2 came out just a couple years after the first game, but other than a port to iPad, the franchise has been mostly silent.
So why a Switch port now? Turns out it was a bit of an experiment for fun.
“All of us at Almost Human have had other things to do besides Legend of Grimrock in recent years so why should we do a port of a game that’s almost 11 years old already?” said co-founder Antti Tiihonen in a press release. “The idea of the port arose when our programmer, Petri Häkkinen, had a Nintendo Switch developer kit and he thought it would be a fun and educational side project to get the game running on our favorite console platform. Most of our decisions aren’t driven by business development plans or market analysis and this one was no exception since we did the project simply because it was enjoyable for us.”
Considering the perfect match that Grimrock and the Switch make, we’re just happy to see it.
Will There Be a Legend of Grimrock 2 Port?
Grimrock 2 was an ambitious sequel that took the game outside of dungeons and into the overworld. It still retained the same grid-based movement system, but tunnels and ancient hallways were replaced by fields and forests.
There’s no word on whether Almost Human will develop a Switch port for Legend of Grimrock 2. There’s also no word on whether they are interested in developing a Legend of Grimrock 3. (We hope so!)
But, if the Switch port performs well then we hope that Almost Human will consider doing both. Legend of Grimrock is one of our favorite dungeon-crawlers of the century so far, and we’d love to see it continue to grow.
Pick up Legend of Grimrock today on the Nintendo eShop!
