Destroy... Absorb... Grow...
Grime (stylized as GRIME) is a Soulslike Metroidvania developed by Clover Bite and published by Akupara Games. The game was released on August 2, 2021 on Windows via Epic Games Store, Steam and GOG.com, and Google Stadia as part of Stadia Pro.
Set in a surreal world obsessed with perfect human anatomy and proportions, you play as a rock-like humanoid with a Unrealistic Black Hole for a head called "The Chiseled One" by several of the malformed denizens. With no information on who and where you are or what is going on, you have to explore the world, fight and absorb enemies and uncover the reason for the world's existence, and eventually your own.
Grime's gameplay is a sidescroller with 3-D models and landscapes. There is no indication of the backstory or background information and you have to piece it together using the clues and words of denizens in this world. Like any RPG, players can find weapons, armor, and upgrades to make their character more powerful. Combat is skill-based focusing on well-timed blocks and absorbs, along with lots of tricky platforming puzzles and bosses. Players get points from killing enemies which they can use to upgrade their tools or themselves. One mechanic is the ability to steal an enemies' Breath upon a successful parry which will fill a bar. Upon filling it, the player can use the Breath to heal themselves, encouraging players to parry their enemies rather than destroy them from the get-go.
At Gamescom 2023, the sequel, Grime 2, was announced.
Grime contains examples of:
- After the End: From what is shown, the world of Grime is a grim place that seems to be on the verge of collapse. It's revealed later in the game that it's the actual corpse of a deity. More specifically, Vered the Worldparent, the Endgiver's mother.
- Alien Sky: After escaping the Weeping Cavity into the open, the sky is an ominous pink-like color with no sun and rocks keep falling from the sky from an unseen roof. The sky is dominated by two black holes with colorful accretion disks.
- Alien Landmass: The land itself is very strange and bizarre. Such oddities include stalactites with eyes that follow the Player Character, teeth growing out of the ground, and giant human-like heads and hands reaching upwards in the background as if they are trying to escape from this world.
- The Beautiful Elite: The Coda, the only beings made entirely of Flesh. The Carven also aspire to this and look down upon anyone who isn't shaped like them and enslave them when they can.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Deconstructed and Enforced in-universe. The world of Grime divides all living beings into castes, and subsequently, their place in the food chain, by how humanoid they are. All stone creatures are at the bottom. If they pay tribute, they can be reshaped at the Carven Palace into lesser Carven as Servants. Servants can receive a limited amount of Flesh to become greater Carven. The Coda are made entirely of Flesh. And the Chiseled One is above them all.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: All over the place. Other than the Player Character, the various denizens are a hodgepodge of differently sized body parts and bizarre landscapes such as living arms growing out of walls and pots, Boulderheads who are rock people with oversized heads, and a crab with a lower human jaw as one of the bosses. They are formed and brought to life via the Breath that was passed to the Worldparent shown in the intro with the Player Character being their proper offspring.
- It is even more bizarre than that, but also mimics things seen in the real world: Like a human body, the Worldparent is dead, but biological functions are still churning, slowing down but not stopped. Much of what goes on within the body is done on automatic, and while the "heart" and "brain" have stopped, the rest of the body continues on while the resources still exist to maintain life. Further, just as how within every cell there is DNA that contains a blueprint of a full human body, every lifeform within the Worldparent feels the need to become a humanoid form, the Old Pain. However, even when a humanoid form is obtained, the Old Pain doesn't go away because they haven't achieved the full form they were meant to gain. The beings able to become truly humanoid are the ones closest to the still-living tissue when the Breath was given, but even they are incomplete. The entire process is similar to someone giving mouth to mouth to someone who died while pregnant, hoping to keep the body alive just long enough that they can complete giving birth.
- Botanical Abomination: The denizens of the Garden are parasitic plants that exist to feed a flower-like creature known as the Child. They do so by feeding off the Breath of the Stoneborn.
- The Blank: The Carven, unlike the Rockheads, do not have faces. This doesn't impede their speech in any way, though. Neither do the Coda, whom the Carven imitate.
- Body Motifs: Again, all over the place given the obsession with perfect human anatomy and proportions. Various characters discuss achieving perfect proportions and various deformed human-like organs like lower jaws and hands are seen on several of the characters and enemies. This is due to the Breath being absorbed by the surroundings in the process of creating forms, which created the many incomplete shapes spread throughout the world.
- Cargo Cult: The Carven are a cult of Stoneborn that worship the Coda as gods and their humanoid shapes were sculpted and reshaped to resemble them. They call them the Formbringers.
- Dark Messiah: You. The Coda worship you, the Great Endgiver as a literal messiah figure and built their entire civilization around you. They did this so that when the time came for their end, they would still be remembered by you.
- Fantastic Caste System: The Carven organize themselves into one of these. At the lowest are the Servants, carved Stoneborn that toil and work until they receive Flesh and ascend to higher ranks. Apprentices are above the Servants and act as assistants for those above them. After enough time and work, they receive wings made of Flesh and become Disciples, and become "true" Carven. Above the Disciples are the Artisans, who carve and mold designs. And above them all lies the Shapely, the leader of the Carven.
- Fantastic Racism: The Carven dislike other Stoneborn that haven't joined their cult and despise anything they deem ugly.
- For most of the game, the Chiseled One falls victim to this at the hands of both sides, the people of Lithic fearing him due to their resemblance to the Carven and their natural perfection, while the Carven hate them for their perfection despite not being a Carven themselves and them being so shapely despite coming from the "ugly" side of the world, a walking sacrilege in their minds. Those few that know who the Chiseled One really is, like Shidra and the Desert Watcher hate him as they don't want to see their world destroyed.
- The Coda dislike the Stoneborn due to their minds being maddened by the Old Pain and the Carven's crazed worship of them, and refer to them as "Dead Ones". They sealed themselves off with Shidra's help to keep the Carven from ruining the Celebration.
- Fragile Speedster: The Chiseled One is able to nimbly dodge and deflect almost anything and are able to hit things really hard. However, they aren't very sturdy and a heavy blow can really mess them up.
- Friendly Enemy: The Coda stage a combat event against the Chiseled One as a celebration of being killed and devoured by it.
- Gentle Giant: The Rockgiants are the trope name, preferring to be left alone until provoked. Then you learn the hard way why you don't wake the sleeping giant as they have One-Hit KO attacks at worst. Killing them gives an increase to your Breath cap.
- Grass is Greener: All creatures in the world of Grime feel incomplete because they are not fully humanoid. Stoneborn tire endlessly just to be reshaped into a slightly more humanoid form as a Carven. The Carven slave endlessly for further shaping via the application of Flesh. And the Coda, the most humanoid beings of them all, work tirelessly just for the honor of being eaten by the Chiseled One, as it does for the entire game. Shidra mocks the Coda for this.
- Heroic Mime: The Player Character never speaks which might have something to do with the Unrealistic Black Hole for a head. Later in the game, Yon, one of your allies said that he despised you not just for the perfect proportions and destroying everything in sight but also for not saying a single word to him.
- Humanoid Abomination: Of all the entities in the world, the Chiseled One is the weirdest. A being with a purple black hole for a head and a human-like body of stone and Levolam, who never speaks and hunts down the larger creatures as prey to grow stronger.
- I Have Many Names: The player is known by several names:
- "The Chiseled One" by Yon, due to your vessel's sculpted body.
- "Akhlan" by Shidra, their assistants and the Worldparent. Whether it's your race or your actual name is at first uncertain, but the Pale Sky's memories reveal its the first. It means "Darkness" in the language of the Worldparent's race. It means Glutton in Hebrew (אכלן).
- A lot of derogatory terms used by the Carven, like "Counterfeit", "Cheater", "Pebble", etc... due to you coming from the Broken Sky and seemingly being sculpted outside their territories, which is considered a sacrilege by their culture.
- "Endgiver" by Goldhead and Fidus, as they're aware of what you are and what you're supposed to do.
- "The Great Endgiver" and "The Spiral Heart" by the Coda, due to your nature as their Dark Messiah.
- I Want My Mommy!: In the Carven Palace, the Rockheads have been taken by the Carven to be used as slave labor at best or resources at worst. The ones in cages are still mourning the loss of the Whispering Mothers, while the ones outside are trying their damnedest to take the Chiseled One down, even if they end up shattered or consumed.
- "Just Frame" Bonus: The Chiseled One "hunts" by absorbing their prey into them through the black hole on a successful counter.
- Last Dance: All of the Coda, up to and including the boss fight. The people there know that their world is ending and the only purpose it now serves is to become your nourishment. By allowing you to pass through their city and giving you a last dance to remember, they are ensuring that some portion of them will remain within your memory.
- Living Weapon: Some of the weapons you can carry are or were once living beings.
- Mama Bear: The Whispering Mothers are a pair of these in Lithic, treating the Rockheads like their big, dumb children that the Chiseled One has slaughtered wholesale for power. Phase 2 has the surviving Mother go on a one-woman Roaring Rampage of Revenge that ends with her and her sister (or lover?) consumed as prey.
- Metroidvania: The gameplay is done on a 2D plane with the map being filled out as you explore and more secrets are revealed as you go, and some areas that can only be accessed as you gain more powerups.
- Multiple Endings: The game has two endings.
- The first has the Chiseled One not ascend to godhood and remain as a unique individual in the world. Shidra rewards the Chiseled One by replacing its original body with a perfectly shaped body made of Levolam. This is only if you decide NOT to fight Shidra.
- The second has the Chiseled One fight and defeat Shidra, who was trying to stop him from ascending to godhood lest it kills all the denizens in their dying world and exits the place to be surrounded by the void of space, other blackhole-like entities, and the remains of gods. He eventually absorbs the remains and becomes a massive living black hole. This is the canon ending since it's the one that allows you to fight the Final Boss.
- New Game Plus: The "Tinge of Terror" DLC adds a New Game Plus mode. Besides carrying over your stats from the previous playthrough, it makes every enemy and boss hit harder, the boss patterns are changed up, new weapons and items are added for this mode, and a new Superboss is added specifically for this mode.
- Perfection Is Addictive: All beings except Shidra, the Chiseled One, and the Coda feel incomplete and misshapen, and crave being shaped into a more humanoid form. Shidra calls it the Old Pain. And as Yon demonstrates, it does NOT get better when he is reshaped.
- Precursors: The Yr were the first race born from the Breath and built their own underground civilization. Unlike most examples, they're still around, but their homeland was devastated by the Vulture and the modern Yrs are mostly feral.
- Purple Is Powerful: The Chiseled One's black hole has a purple accretion disc, and they have the potential to become the strongest being in their world.
- The Resenter: Several creatures, in particular, Servants, lash out at the Chiseled One for being born with a perfect body, while they had to go through an eternity of labor to be reshaped into more humanoid forms.
- Scenery Porn: The eastern half of the world is full of beauty. Enforced by the Cenotaph City, as the Coda built it intentionally to please the Endgiver's senses.
- Shoot the Dog: Canonically, you do this on a planet-wide scale, becoming a full living black hole in order to finally put the decaying world out of its misery rather than leave it to the agonizing process of a slow death.
- Sinister Scythe: The Chiseled One can find three different scythes in the game. A blue Nail Scythe can be found in the Weeping Cavity, a white Nail Scythe can be bought from an Apprentice Trader at Worldpillar, and the Bloodmetal Scythe can be bought by the Owl in Feaster's Lair.
- Souls-like RPG: The game is inspired by Dark Souls, Hollow Knight and Dead Cells, so it's understandable.
- Taking You with Me: Shapely Fidus does this at the end of their boss fight, crawling around on their hand body as they burn to death before trying to take the Chiseled One out in a suicide attack. They just end up being another meal.
- Unblockable Attack: Several enemies have these. The game usually warns you by either making them glow red or by giving parts of their body a permanent red glow.
- Unobtanium: Flesh. Flesh is a white, wax-like substance that can be easily shaped in contrast to all the stones in the world of Grime. It is highly prized. Stoneborn creatures and the Carven labor it for seemingly an eternity just to have some applied to their bodies so they can look more humanoid. It turns out that the Coda are the only beings made entirely of Flesh, as they live adjacent to a massive amount of it, sealing themselves with it.
- Bloodmetal is a rare blood-colored ore that Shidra can improve your weapons with. Although Shidra is the only known being who can manipulate it into something usable, the Bloodmetal Scythe proves There Is Another.
- Levolam is a purplish crystalline mineral that tries to merge with other pieces of itself, as if trying to make itself whole. Your Vessels (the physical bodies attached to your black hole head) and Surrogates (the game's bonfire equivalent) are entirely made of the stuff.
- There's also the Breath itself, the golden substance that gives life to the Stoneborn. After long periods of time, it can also harden into a solid substance known as Breathdew. Several of the game's bonus bosses have hearts of solid Breathdew, and when killed by the Chiseled One, he can smash them to permanently increase his own Breath capacity.
- Liverock is Breath-infused Stillrock (the normal stone the world is made of) and the material the Stoneborn themselves are made of. The Carven extract it from Rockheads, both willing Servants and unwilling kidnappings to build their structures as it's a far better building material than Stillrock.
- Vile Vulture: One of the bosses, aptly named "Vulture", is a massive avian-like monster in the crude shape of a vulture made of bones and fur.
- Warp Whistle: You get this after killing the final boss, Shidra. The "Colors of Rot" DLC's second boss, Giant of Eyes, grants the ability to warp between each discovered Surrogate."Everywhere, at once. Like all Kin."
- Was It Really Worth It?: When Yon is reshaped into a Carven, he realizes he still feels empty inside: being reshaped doesn't cure the Old Pain.
- What the Hell, Hero?: The Chiseled One gets called out by several denizens for destroying just about everything and everyone in sight without a care for them, all to grow stronger.
- Although, since the world is literally in the process of dying with no hope of halting the process, you're essentially killing and destroying people doomed to die in short order anyway.
