Grimoire Groves

I honestly loved this game. It was super cute and relaxing but still managed to be challenging which I appreciated! It is a neat spin on a Rogue Lite and I had a lot of fun playing through the game and getting all the achievements. I seriously feel like this game is so under-rated for the amount of enjoyment I got from it. What I Loved: • The artwork and story of this game are absolutely adorable. • I liked the concept of watering all the plants to get their seeds and things instead of having to fight them and thought it was a cute touch. (Also the plants "hugging" you is both frustrating but also an adorable addition.) • It has a relaxing mode and there is no penalty for switching back and forth between it and the normal mode. I particularly appreciated this towards the end of the game when the plants got a bit harder to water. I would switch modes depending on what I was trying to accomplish. • The game is still challenging even with Relaxing mode on. The only real benefit is you don't take damage from "attacks" on relaxing mode. I found this especially useful for figuring out which spells I wanted to use. You can still run out of energy if you fail to water the plants fast enough or get too far away, but it goes down a lot slower. • There's 4 general areas for the forest, one for each element (earth, air, fire, and water), the more plants you unlock and more elements you unlock the more challenging it feels. • There's a nice variety of spells to choose from and I liked trying out each one to find the ones that best fit my playstyle and worked well against the variety of plants. • Others might find it tedious or a bit grindy, but I enjoyed the collection quests within the game. It added an extra dimension of challenge as you kind of have to try to plan your route to best fulfill the quests and you don't always end up with all of the components you need in one run (you can unlock some storage later into the game which is extremely helpful for this though.) The Maybe Not So Great, But Still Fine (At Least To Me) • The game is a smidge buggy at times. A couple examples: there was one time I somehow dashed past the tree-line and got stuck outside the geometry and the final boss glitched for me and froze up when I was trying to figure out what to do and ran out of energy. None of the bugs were game breaking though and were easily fixed by restarting the game. Please note that some of the bugs I encountered were likely because I played with a keyboard and mouse and the game does tell you as soon as you open it that's it's best played with a controller. • At times I did wish for a little more guidance or tutorial on what to do, especially on the boss fights at the end of each level. I figured them all out but it definitely took some trial and error. I suppose this is no different than figuring out how to beat a raid boss in an MMO, but it felt a little odd for something that otherwise felt really cozy. • This game is very color dependent (red for fire, blue for water, yellow for earth, green for air). It you struggle with colors you might struggle a bit with this game. There were a couple areas I personally struggled, but cycling through the different elements until I found the ones that were correct wasn't overly difficult to do and for the plants that require multiple elements, the element sequences were pretty easy to memorize. Overall I definitely recommend this one and will be keeping my eyes out for future titles from this developer. For more reviews check out the Under Starry Skies curator page!

I've had so much fun with this game. I've completed every quest and almost every resource farming Some pros: Very cute graphics Battles are challenging but not frustratingly difficult The characters are really fun and I fully enjoyed. Some cons: Does get a little laggy at times, nothing game breaking Can take a long time to get all the resources you need Overall very fun, good for cozy gamers who like a little challenge.

It took me a little bit to get the hang of the controls, but I'm HOOKED! The animation is very cute, I'm loving the story and all the side characters and quests. I'm so happy I backed this game on Kickstarter.