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GRIME
game
•7/14/2026

GRIME

byClover Bite
SteamNintendo Switch
8.6
The Verdict
"GRIME is the rare genre exercise that justifies its existence. Clover Bite took two of the most imitated frameworks in gaming — the Soulslike and the metroidvania — and found a mechanical idea nobody else had built: combat and progression fused into a single parry. That the studio wrapped it in one of the most striking visual identities of its generation makes the achievement harder to ignore." "It isn't flawless. The cryptic story will lose players who want narrative clarity, the difficulty occasionally spikes past fair, and the Switch port betrays the precision the design demands. But these are the complaints of a game reaching high and missing a few grips, not one playing it safe. Buy it on PC, come for the black hole, and stay for a combat loop that will change how you think about the parry button. Just skip the Switch version unless you have no other choice."

Gallery

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Key Features

The Absorb-and-Grow Loop: Parry an enemy at the right moment and your black hole consumes them, converting their essence into upgrade currency. Combat and progression are the same act. There's no grinding in a corner — every fight is a resource.
Mutating Living Weapons: Your arsenal isn't steel; it's flesh that shifts in form and function. Weapon variety translates directly into distinct playstyles, and the build system rewards specialization over dabbling.
Interconnected, Secret-Dense World: A hand-built metroidvania map with hidden paths, layered zones, and the kind of shortcut-unlocking geography that makes the world feel like a machine you're slowly learning to operate.

The Good

Genuinely original absorb-and-parry combat loop
Stunning, coherent anatomical-horror art direction
Excellent, memorable oversized boss fights
Definitive Edition's DLC adds real content

The Bad

Occasional brutal difficulty spikes
Story leans cryptic to the point of opacity
Backtracking overstays its welcome at times
Switch performance undercuts the precise combat

In-Depth Review

Bottom Line: GRIME is one of the most visually audacious Soulslikes ever made, welding grotesque anatomical horror to a parry-and-devour combat loop that feels genuinely fresh. It stumbles on cryptic storytelling and a rough Switch port, but on PC it's essential.

The Gameplay Loop

The genius of GRIME is that it refuses to separate offense from progression. In most Soulslikes, you fight to survive, then spend souls at a bonfire. Here, the parry is the economy. Time your absorption correctly and you don't just avoid damage — you harvest the enemy in front of you, pulling their essence into your build in real time. It collapses two systems that usually sit in separate menus into a single, tense, moment-to-moment decision.

This does something psychological. It changes how you read a fight. A lesser game trains you to play defensively when you're low on health; GRIME trains you to lean in, because the absorb window is also your reward window. Risk and reward aren't balanced against each other — they're the same button. That's a design achievement most studios with ten times Clover Bite's budget never reach.

The build system flows naturally from this. Absorbed essence feeds traits, and traits let you tailor your vessel to your instincts — heavier, tankier, and slower, or lean and parry-dependent. Because the game funnels resources through combat rather than loot drops, your build reflects how you actually play, not what the RNG handed you. Investing in the traits that suit you feels like sculpting the character out of your own habits.

The Difficulty Curve

Let's be honest about the punishment. GRIME is demanding, and it doesn't apologize. The Souls DNA is real: enemies hit hard, positioning matters, and the game expects you to learn its language through death. For the most part it stays on the right side of the "demanding-but-fair" line — deaths feel earned, boss patterns are legible once you stop panicking, and the parry timing is generous enough to be masterable without being a gift.

But there are difficulty spikes that break the rhythm. Certain encounters and boss checks land with a severity out of step with the surrounding content, and when the curve jumps, it can feel less like a designed test and more like an oversight. This is the most common, and most legitimate, complaint from the player base. It doesn't sink the experience. It does mean newcomers to the genre should walk in with their expectations calibrated.

Exploration and Pacing

The map is the game's quiet triumph. Zones interconnect with the satisfying inevitability of a good metroidvania — that moment when a wall you passed three hours ago suddenly reveals itself as a shortcut back to base. Curiosity is rewarded consistently with secrets and hidden paths. The tradeoff is backtracking, which occasionally overstays its welcome, and pacing that sags when the world asks you to re-tread ground without enough new friction to justify the trip. The oversized boss encounters are the punctuation marks that keep the momentum alive — spectacular set pieces that test timing and movement rather than raw reflexes, and among the strongest in the genre.

Editorial Disclaimer

The reviews and scores on this site are based on our editorial team's independent analysis and personal opinions. While we strive for objectivity, gaming experiences can be subjective. We are not compensated by developers for these scores.