GRIME is a paid adventure game from Akupara Games. This 2D platformer makes use of vividly-designed 3D models against equally immersive 3D backgrounds. You play as a humanoid alien that has the ability to forge living weapons and absorb enemies. Travel across an alien world that is both familiar and strange, and uncover the secrets of your existence and everything around you.

With captivating 3D graphics in a 2D platforming game and an absolute souls-like difficulty, GRIME is a title that players shouldn’t sleep on. Imagine the imagery of Blasphemous combined with the platforming difficulty of Hollow Knight, and you get this game.

A surreal adventure

In GRIME, you control a character with a black hole for a head. That’s not even the weirdest part of it, as the game features a varied cast of characters. You have funny and likable side characters to interact with, as well as frightening Lovecraftian monsters to face. This brings us to the next great thing: the combat system. It has a parry system on top of airborne combos.

For the gameplay, it’s a standard Metroidvania fare. There will be multiple backtracking involved, although the set designs make every part of the journey worthwhile. Also, as a souls-like title, expect some unforgiving difficulty. It requires a combination of timing, precision, and a bit of creativity to survive and make the most out of its combat possibilities. It even has a great weapon upgrading system.

Although map exploration and backtracking are standard parts of the genre, the lack of a fast travel option makes the game unnecessarily dragging, although it constitutes a challenge in itself. Also, players report experiencing bugs such as starting the game to find the controls randomly remapped, and any efforts to restore it break the game, causing it to crash. However, these bugs appear intermittent and at worst, isolated cases.

Top-tier platformer

Since the 2D platforming genre is finding new ground among modern players, GRIME is a perfect entry to check out. It checks out all the boxes of the Metroidvania subgenre, including the unnecessary difficulty stemming from the lack of a fast travel mechanic. Similarly, its adoption of souls-like elements makes it anything but boring and easy. Practice your timing and analyze enemy movement patterns. Challenging and fun, highly recommended.