Edited on: September 19, 2025
Posted on: November 11, 2020
dnovraD
Games: Reviews: 74
A spearpoint burial for the eyes.
This game is ugly: From basic concepts such as buttons not having visible hitboxes to glaringly garish colour choices right down to the basic visual consistency which is non-existent. One could perhaps make a claim of this being outsider art; but even that is subject to the ideals of usability in a working product. A good sign of things to come has to do with how the starting screen is laid out. When one uses pulldown memus, the typical first option is some variation on New. Grimore puts Start Game four options down. From there, the basic failure to conceptualize ideas of navigation continue. The main screen presented and the attack on the eyes continues. starting with more dazzlingly unreadable fonts, hideously sharp icons, and yet more mismatching visual styles. But it only gets worse. Up to this point, the only bit of visual consistency is that everything is laid out in ugly beveled squares. Except for the garish yellow buttons. Once you're in the inventory workshop, it all becomes rectangles. AND LOUD TYPEFACES THAT FAIL TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING USEFUL. See the thing about good interface design is that explaining what the thing does is a failure. What I can glean is that there a lot of ?untranslated variables? that were never put into cleaner language which just looks sloppy. Within the combat interface, we're presented with a murder mystery. The body of the interface lies upon the table, and the dissection reveals it died of information starvation. In most dungeon crawlers, you have a running combat log or some kind of hitting indicator. Of course, this may be hard to notice among another lay of abstraction, the constant noise given by your opponent. Grimoire's combat is a slow tedious joke of too many selections. Oh boy, the options. Tell me. Is purple on brown easy to read? Do typical option toggles make you click though each one before cycling around? No. They don't. Grimoire is a throwback of worst ways possible, combining the worst of interface design.
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