Grim Trials is a 2D action-roguelike with a hack-and-slash fighting style, which opens with an animatic introducing our protagonist, Avelin. Resurrected as a ‘Reaper in training’, she will now endure various trials to become a full-fledged Reaper in the hopes of seeing her love once again.
A review key was provided by Neon Doctrine.
Frights and Fights
Grim Trials follows the modern action roguelike formula: explore rooms, clear out monsters, and gain buffs for every room cleared. It’s simple, it’s fast and it’s fun. However, instead of your usual 4-wall rooms, the game features hex-grid rooms, allowing the game to randomise 6 possible rooms for you to go through.
The buffs you get for clearing a room can be split into 3 main types, which are for your melee attack, range attack and special attack. Each buff comes with 5 levels, with each level being an upgrade. However, you are only given 3 options at a time, so the 3 buffs you get to select from after each room are randomized, giving players that lovely roguelike experience that many of us have become familiar with.
The game’s fighting focuses mainly on timing for attacks and dodges, which sets the game apart from from other titles in the action roguelike genre, where the timings are a little slower. An example of this is that there is no animation cancel for the final attack combo that you make. I’m not sure if this is on purpose or accidental, but once you are aware of that, combat becomes a lot clearer and smoother.
On top of the randomized buffs, you also get permanent buffs after each ‘run’, where you can increase the base stats of your characters, including their Crit Rate, Crit Damage, and Attack speed, just to name a few. The skill tree for these permanent buffs is quite large, so be sure to read through it carefully.
Better Equipment
The game features a fairly in-depth crafting mechanic, where you are able to craft a few clothing types, with each type granting different stats and skills, which changes the style of your gameplay.
There is however some friction within the current crafting system, which is that you will need to remember every item you are crafting by yourself. When pinning items to craft, these pins don’t show up in other menus or during the main gameplay scene. The materials needed for the item also do not show up in other menus.
Demo Access
With the game being in beta access, I went in with the expectations that I would face some bugs, but during my playthrough, I only saw one major bug that hindered my fun. That is, occasionally attacks do not register if the player character is standing on a monster. It might be a layering issue caused by the 2D game format, so hopefully it’s something that will be fixed in the full release. Apart from that, the game ran flawlessly without any other major issues, which is nice.
I’d also like to mention that the developers recommend playing the game with a controller, but I faced issues getting my PS4 controller to work properly with the game, which could be a glitch with the game, Steam, or my controller itself. Still, after trying to play the game with a mouse and keyboard for a few hours, I do agree that using a controller is the optimal choice.
Conclusion
Grim Trials offers players a very fun roguelike hack-and-slash experience. Many times during my playthrough, I found myself clenching my jaw just because of the difficulty I faced within certain rooms.
The game’s story is still in its introductory phase, with many things remaining unexplained, such as who Avelin really is, what it means to be a full fledged Reaper, or even what it means to ‘face your own demons’. But the mystery is interesting enough to pique my curiosity, and I’ll definitely want to give this game another go when it fully comes out.
This article was contributed by Darren Barker, your sleepy coffee-drinking game design student and co-founder of The Cham Drinkers. Follow him on X/Twitter where he posts and retweets about the ASEAN Game Dev scene and cats.
Try out the Grim Trials demo on Steam, and top up your Steam Wallet on Codashop to earn bonus rewards.
