Grimm or American McGee’s Grimm if you want to go by the game’s full title is an episodic adventure/platform game. This is a delightfully twisted and gross version of some of classic fairy tales that we all grew up with. American McGee did a wonderful job with Alice and it is interesting to see this take on other fairy tales too.
How to Download Grimm
To download all episodes of Grimm from Steam, click on the Download button at the end of this review.
The Game Review
The first episode is called A Boy Who Learns What Fear Is and it is free. The remaining episodes for each season range from Little Red Riding Hood, Puss In Boots, and Beauty and the Beast need to be purchased separately. It is an interesting way to release a game and there are many episodes to play through if you get into the game.
Our “hero” is a short dwarf-looking man called Grimm. Grimm loses his crap one day while reading a fairy tale book to some kids. He is sick of the cutesy way that the world has turned these classic tales and he is going to turn the whole land into a dirty, smelly, and gross place the way that these stories were intended.
As a premise, I think this is fantastic and Grimm is a hilarious character. At the start of the game, he does a little song that sets up his grievances and what he plans to do about them. While the game is dark and gross, it has real humor about it all and I found it very funny, even if he does repeat his one-liners one time too many.
The visuals of American McGee’s Grimm are great, they look like a pop-up picture book that has sprung to life. I like the way things will turn twisted such as plants becoming alive and zombie kids being on the see-saw! It is very clever and imaginative stuff and the game certainly does have a lot of style.
The thing is, style is no good without substance, and as much as I want to love this game. This is a game that is 100 percent style over substance. Each “story” has different chapters, but the goal is the same. Playing as Grimm you need to run and jump around the level, making it dirty and gross.
You have a meter that will fill at the top and as this fills, you become faster and your “aura” of mess becomes larger. The game is very simple, you occasionally will need to butt bump something like a door or a larger object, but that is all there is to the gameplay. There are cleaners that will try and clean your mess, but they are very slow and pose no real challenge to you.
I am not saying that Grimm is a bad game. It is certainly a great deal of fun; however, I have played the first season and I do not see enough here to make me want to jump into the second. The premise and style of the game is 100 percent awesome and a lot of fun. I just wish there was more to the gameplay to go along with it.
