Legend of Grimrock

Legend of Grimrock is a deliberate return to the classic dungeon-crawler form — Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Ultima Underworld — modernized just enough to be approachable while keeping the essential structure intact. Grid-based movement, real-time tactical combat, hidden switches and pressure plates, traps, secrets, deadly monsters and ancient ruins all sit in their original positions.

The setup is appropriately bleak. A party of four prisoners, sentenced to certain death, is exiled to the secluded Mount Grimrock for crimes they may or may not have committed. The mountain is riddled with ancient tunnels, dungeons and tombs left by long-perished civilizations, and the only path to freedom runs through them — level by level, downward into older and stranger architecture.

Character creation lets you assemble the party from different races, classes, skills and traits. Combat blends weapons, rune-based spellcasting and herb-based potion crafting. Puzzles and exploration matter more than raw combat optimization — the player's wits and perception are sharper tools than the swords. Thousands of grid squares hide pressure plates, sliding walls, floating crystals, forgotten altars, trapdoors and the long list of mechanical traps the genre has always run on.

For veterans of the form, an Oldschool Mode disables the automap and asks you to draw your own dungeon layouts on grid paper. The game ships with digital extras including a hand-illustrated manual, a Mount Grimrock world map, custom grid paper, the game's theme music, art sheets of the creatures you'll meet, and a photo of the Almost Human team — small touches that signal a project made with affection for its source material. A dungeon editor extends the game with community-made content.