Grimlight is an anime-style mobile game created by Eight Studio and Gaudium and was released in July of 2022 for both Android and iOS. The game features a tactical formation style combat system with RPG elements where you collect characters inspired by fairy tales and legends.
You are the Dreamer. You wake up in a strange world you don’t recognize with no knowledge of how you got there. Only a strangely familiar-looking girl is there to meet you. She says that her job is to protect you and that she is sorry, but there is no time to explain properly because the world you both currently inhabit is collapsing and will fall soon into the void. You must both quickly escape, fleeing the destruction and fighting off the terrifying shadow creatures called Dreamless, the girl takes the dreamer to a chamber that holds a large gem called the Dreamstone. Touching the stone teleports you to a new world.
As you wake up you find yourself in the land of Phantasia, a land that is gradually falling apart into the void. To save the world, you must use your powers to summon heroes from fragments of their Memory Shards to defeat the Dominion lords and retrieve the World Stones. Only then can you save the world from destruction.
On April 11, 2024, the developers announced through Discord that the game will shut down its services. The plan is to convert the game into a standalone build with a last update, scheduled to be released on late 2024. Social systems such as friend and PvP features will be disabled to ensure sustainability without ongoing server costs when this process is finalized.
Tropes that appear in this game:
- Anti Poop-Socking: Playing stages is limited by Keys, a stamina system that regenerates Keys periodically or can be refilled through buying them in the Shop. The same goes for the Arena, which uses Arena Flags.
- Asian Fox Spirit: The Dreamless Kitsune, and the boss form of Tamamo no Mae.
- Color-Coded Elements: All heroes have color schemes that reflect their element's colors, starting with Fire Is Red, Water Is Blue (and ice), green for Nature, gold and white for Light, and Dark being purple (with a dash of red sometimes).
- Early-Bird Cameo: The illustration of Guardian Sphinx was teased in one of the artists' portfolio website, but the sphinx himself is introduced in Chapter 13.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: All heroes and enemies are tied to one of five elements: Fire, Water, Nature, Light, and Dark. Each has an advantage of dealing 25% more damage over another element: Fire beats Nature, Nature beats Water, Water beats Fire, and Light and Dark are mutually effective against each other.
- Fairy Tale Free-for-All: The game is built on this, with the world of Phantasia being a big cultural pot of numerous worlds based on real-life fairy tales with their characters included, all of whom interact with each other throughout the story.
- The Four Gods: Genbu, Suzaku, Byakko, and Seiryuu show up as bosses.
- Gameplay Automation: Par of the course with these kind of gacha mobiles games, there is an auto-battle button.
- The Heartless: The Dreamless, people and animals who have been reduced to memories warped by the Dreamless Nether into becoming threats to all life in Phantasia and can only be put down. Can be imagined as a hybrid expy of the actual Heartless and Dream Eaters.
- Manual Leader, A.I. Party: You do not directly control any party member in battle. The most you can do is reorganize each character's positions or switch them out with other members at the start of a wave, and use their skills at the right moment.
- Play Every Day: Missions reset daily, giving you objectives to do to gain rewards each day. There also weekly missions.
- Power Equals Rarity: Heroes of higher rarity will have skills and traits that grant stronger and unique effects that can overturn the battlefield compared to those of lower rarity, though this is held back by the comparatively higher cost to upgrade them.
- Resources Management Gameplay: In combat gameplay, hero deployment is limited by crystals to the right of the "Begin Wave" button called Deployment Points; you start with a set amount of points which is raised by 3 every time you face the next wave. Each hero has their own Deploy Cost as indicated on the top right of their card, so having a plethora of classes and heroes, and judging which of their abilities are needed is important to your tactics.
- Trapped in Another World: The Dreamer comes from outside of Phantasia, having ended up there through unknown means and without any memory of where they came from. Heroes Dorothy, Alice, and Marie also came from beyond, though their own attempts to leave Phantasia have been met with failure as explained in the Chapter 12 sub path, where the former two describe being dissolved while hearing discordant voices when they got stuck in between worlds; Marie heard from Nutcracker that this is known as the "Mnemosyne Boundary".
- Victory Pose: Notable in that victory animations are not limited to your playable units; enemies will joyfully celebrate your defeat too.
