GRIME

GRIME is an action RPG from Clover Bite that sits firmly in the Souls-like genre, but earns its place there through a mechanic that most imitators never bother to invent: absorption. You are a being of living stone and void, and instead of simply killing enemies, you can pull them into yourself, consuming their traits to build your character. It is the core loop, and it gives what could have been a standard punish-and-retry structure a genuinely strange identity. The world Clover Bite built is the real draw. It is a place made of flesh, bone, and mineral, where the architecture breathes and the enemies look like failed experiments from a god who lost interest halfway through. The visual design owes a debt to Cronenberg-style body horror but finds its own register, one that feels closer to a fever dream painted in terracotta and viscera. For anyone who cares about worldbuilding that goes beyond aesthetic wallpaper, GRIME rewards attention. Environmental storytelling is dense, lore fragments are cryptic without being deliberately obtuse, and the whole thing has the texture of a mythology someone actually thought through. Combat is precise and demanding. You have a parry system that, when it clicks, feels enormously satisfying, and the weapon variety is wider than the early hours suggest. Weapons mutate and combine traits in ways that push build variety past the point most genre entries manage. The absorption mechanic ties directly into stat growth, which means your build is shaped by what you fight and what you choose to consume. That is a meaningful design decision. It connects combat decisions to character progression in a way that makes the system feel authored rather than bolted on. Past hour 20, when you have started locking into a playstyle, the depth holds up. Where GRIME falters is in pacing. The mid-section of the game loses momentum noticeably. Some areas feel less like designed challenges and more like the studio running out the clock before the next narrative beat lands. There are stretches where the enemy variety flattens and the absorption rewards feel incremental rather than exciting. The map design, while atmospheric, can drift toward the confusing side of non-linear, and the lack of strong navigation aids will frustrate players who are not already wired for Metroidvania-style spatial reasoning. The narrative payoff also asks for patience. Answers come slowly, and the storytelling is oblique enough that some players will reach the credits without feeling like the threads resolved cleanly. For players who want a Souls-like with genuine creative ambition, a distinctive visual world, and a central mechanic that actually changes how the genre feels, GRIME delivers. It is not a polished blockbuster, and it will not hold your hand. But the absorption system, the art direction, and the sheer commitment to its own surreal logic make it worth the friction. If you have already worked through the obvious genre entries and want something with a stranger soul, this is where to look. Monika, Scout Team