Legend of Grimrock

Lore & Background

Legend of Grimrock began as a hobby project called Dungeon Master 2000 in 2001 by a former Amiga demoscene coder, later renamed Escape from Dragon Mountain. In early 2011, the developers decided to expand it into a commercial-quality game, drawing inspiration from Eye of the Beholder and Ultima Underworld. The four founders left their jobs at Finnish game companies such as Remedy Entertainment and Futuremark to form Almost Human in February 2011, self-financing development.

The game's plot follows a group of prisoners sentenced to be thrown into Mount Grimrock for crimes against the King. Guided by a disembodied voice, they descend through the dungeon, eventually discovering a machine called the Undying One. After repairing it, the machine attacks them; they escape through a portal, find the tomb of the dungeon's creators, and use a special weapon to destroy the Undying One, causing the mountain to collapse. The prisoners' final fate is left ambiguous.

Gameplay is first-person with tile-based movement and real-time combat. Players control a party of one to four characters, solving puzzles and fighting creatures to gain experience and equipment. An optional 'old-school mode' disables the in-game map, requiring players to navigate manually, and the digital manual includes a printable grid sheet for charting the dungeon.

Reader's Guide

Legend of Grimrock is significant for its faithful recreation of the grid-based dungeon crawler genre popular in the 1990s, particularly Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder. It was generally well received, with critics praising its puzzles and modern presentation of old-school mechanics. GameSpy highlighted the puzzles as a standout feature, while Destructoid noted the game's seamless integration of classic feel into the modern era. Edge described it as a near-facsimile of Dungeon Master, effective at evoking nostalgia.

Some reviewers criticized the combat system for allowing exploitative tactics such as repeated retreats and sidesteps. Game Informer noted that while the game's presentation was a 'beautiful marriage,' the monster design encouraged tedious player behavior. Despite these criticisms, the game sold over 600,000 copies by January 2013 and 900,000 by October 2014. A sequel, Legend of Grimrock II, was released in 2014. In 2017, the game was included in a collection of 100 Finnish games presented at the opening of the Finnish Museum of Games in Tampere. A live-action series set in the Grimrock universe was funded via Kickstarter in 2014 but never produced.

Did You Know?

• Legend of Grimrock was the debut game of Almost Human, a four-man Finnish indie team formed in February 2011.
• The game includes an optional 'old-school mode' that deactivates the in-game map, requiring players to navigate manually.