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Grim Idle" (or "Grim Clicker" as it's known on Steam) is a free indie game of the genre "idle games". What that basically means is that the game plays itself and would continue to do so without needing the player's input, because there is no fail state. It require a certain amount of strategy from players to optimize resources to continuously earn more. Probably the most popular game in this genre is Cookie Clicker. Personally, this is my first experience with the idle games genre.
So if the game plays itself, what is the gameplay about? Your task is "optimization". You see an immortal warrior automatically running on a linear path and fighting incoming enemies. Each enemy drops red rubies which is the currency you used to upgrade the damage of the warrior's weapons by clicking on the weapon icons on the lower left side of the screen. Additionally the warrior gains experience points and levels up like in an RPG and you can distribute the skill points to strength, stamina and magic, or unlock abilities like a snowstorm spell. You can also either click on the screen which speeds up the warrior, but uses stamina (hence why other games in the genre are called "clicker games") and use the cursor to click on certain bonfires, shrines or flying fireflies which grant certain things like stamin or more rubies. The warrior travels through "zones" separated by portals and each new zones offers stronger enemies which take longer to defeat. You will notice that at some point your progression will dramatically slow down and the warrior will take a very long time to defeat enemies: that's the point where the game wants you to use candles for a ritual which resets all stats of the warrior and sends him back to the first zone, but all the weapons are kept. Additionally all the candles you had before are converted into black candles which you can use to unlock permanent improvements. There is also a premium currency in the form of purple shards which you can use to unlock chests which contain new weapons and charms you can combine with weapons. You can gain shards though regular play but it's very slow.
In general the gameplay is very simple and it does contain a certain addictive factor where you get the urge to see the game running just to farm a few more points and optimize the warrior's stats and the number go up. I guess the game is endless and the "gameplay" stays the same throughout the whole time you play it, so sooner or later you will need to decide when you had enough and want to stop playing. Personally I never felt the need to spend money on buying more shards while unlocking all the achievements, but I can imagine those who get hooked on the game will be challenged by a grind which is eased by the premium currency.
Presentation wise the game is a fairly basic low budget indie production. You have fairly basic looking 2D sprites of the warrior and enemies, performing simple animations in front of basic 2D backgrounds. I didn't like the menu navigation, especially the inventory where you can check and upgrade your weapons with charms was unintuitive to navigate on the controller. It's easy to see the game's UI was made for mouse & keyboard navigation on PC.
Personally I only downloaded the game for the easy achievements. The game is fairly straight forward once you get the hang out of it and all the currently available achievement can be unlocked in around 2 hours. As a free game it is a nice distraction for those few hours and I enjoyed getting to learn a new game genre, but it's not a game which I would play over a long period of time. It's fairly similar to the game
Loot Hero DX which is also a simple quick completion indie game.
3.0