Grimm's Hollow

Realising that I'm a really big fan of the RPGmaker aesthetic because of games like this. I love looking at games and how they can be designed around certain constraints, seeing what interesting ideas are brought to the forefront to be conducive to both a great experience and one that doesn't compromise in its vision. In this case, it seems like the entire goal of the game was to craft an emotionally moving, character driven story while only having around 2 hours of gameplay, give or take, and I'd say that in this regard, Grimm's Hollow is a resounding success. The game is shockingly good at providing very clear and interesting pieces of characterisation that rapidly inject a lot of charm and colour into the world, all main characters having extremely clear and nuanced elements to their individual motives, a bunch of genuinely funny lines, just a bit of everything to give them just enough unique traits to feel distinct and interesting while still shrouding them in enough mystery to keep them intriguing, even once the game ends.

To add to this, the narrative in general is short yet very effective in its portrayal of attempting to process grief and everything that comes along with it in a variety of ways that naturally act as a way to ramp the tension and stakes. I love the way the music becomes so intense as things go on until it hits a point where it completely plateaus into a series of long winded, droning melodies that feel as if they represent the true reality of the situation setting in. Likewise, the use of colour feels pretty interesting, with the vaguely warm and cool colours of blue and purple being gradually phased out for a much harsher red, which cleverly manages to establish a much more intense feeling that once again feels as if it's then cleverly phased out to a more neutral series of greys and whites.

On top of the excellent, charming writing, I also really appreciated the combat once I got into it, being fairly simple and easy, but providing a lot of variety in what way you could choose to build your character and approach any given situation, having to carefully consider where to dump your resources for whatever potentially dangerous situation is ahead. The little timing based elements also kept it that bit fresher feeling, even if those mechanics were ultimately pretty shallow and felt as if they really should have had some nicer feedback associated with them to feel as polished as so many other elements here, but they did the trick enough to only rarely be a distraction. Overall this is just a really solid little game that does a lot with its short runtime and feels like an extremely well oiled machine with so much heart behind it. Definitely play this if you're at all into RPGmaker aesthetics or charming, occasionally quirky narrative experiences.