Grimshade Updates, Game Overview

With its $100,000 initial goal, Talerock’s story-driven RPG Grimshade is currently sitting at $43,730 pledged with 18 more days left to go in its Kickstarter campaign. Now, I’ve been wrong before with my crowdfunding predictions, so I won’t even try to do it here, and instead I’ll just direct you to a couple of the more interesting campaign updates. Update #2 offers a look at Grimshade’s steampunk-inspired world, while Update #8 promises an early 2019 Nintendo Switch port if the game indeed gets made.

And if you’d like to know more about this game, its setting, inspirations, and systems, you might want to check out this sponsored OnlySP article that’s essentially the developers providing a general overview of their game. An excerpt:

Love tactical RPGs? How about Steampunk? Our studio, Talerock, has been developing a very unique title combining both of those things, and now, finally, we are ready to share our progress with the public. The result is a labor of love called Grimshade, a game for mature audiences. We invite you to look at our new project.

Grimshade is somewhat coy in its aesthetics. While the artwork may be bright and colorful at times, the events of the story are nothing but. Grimshade, as the name implies, sets out to tell a dark, thought-provoking tale, sorry, war, and dread.

Grimshade was born as a story-driven tactical role-playing game with turn-based combat and non-linear progression. The game is divided into two distinct phases: Adventure and Combat. During the adventure phase, the player has the option to progress the storyline, tackle side-quests, explore the location they are currently in, develop relationships with party members, trade, craft equipment, search for treasure, and engage in combat encounters.

At its core, Grimshade is a turn-based tactical combat game.

Our game is not unlike the myriad of Japanese tactical RPGs, but with a significant twist. While most tactical RPG games will lock a character with a specific role (or set of roles) with little growth outside of stat gains, Grimshade allows each character in the party collect and switch between a large variety of equipment that changes the way they work in combat, rather than improving their raw power.

The game mixes such elements as proper positioning and awareness; these are far more crucial to success than stat gains. Party and equipment management happen outside of combat, which allows precise control of a character during battles. There are epic enemies to vanquish and an ancient secret to unravel at the heart of the story.

Once a player engages a hostile creature or character the game switches to combat mode, where fighting ensues. We regularly challenge the player by mixing up combat scenarios. We will gradually introduce the player to new enemies, which bring some new tricks to the table and ever-so-slightly push the player out of their comfort zone, encouraging them to experiment and adapt. For the most dedicated of players, Grimshade has a set of optional tough challenges that demand a high level of understanding and a certain amount of preparation to overcome.