What is Grimroll

Grimroll is a dice-based roguelike that features roll-and-write mechanics in a roguelike structure. It’s a game about throwing dice and then using the rolls you get to use items, defeating spirits and trying to survive in time to fulfil your wish.

I Previously mentioned a bunch of board games that inspired us to create Grimroll, most notably a game called “That’s pretty clever”. The core mechanic behind that game was also crossing out numbers in grids and then getting rewards which give you options to cross out more numbers which give you rewards to cross out even more.

In this post I'll go over what the core mechanics of Grimroll are, how it came about and why we believe it's the next roguelike you'll get addicted to.

Each choice is a reward

A very rewarding aspect of the game is the idea that every time you cross out a number you will get something in return. This makes the game very “push forward”, you’re always chasing that next reward and that next step to clear a level or defeat an enemy. The expectation is that if you have 3 dice with 3 numbers to use that you will most likely cross out 3 or less numbers but since every time you do this you get a reward, things tend to get crazy quickly. Most rewards are consumables that manipulate your dice rolls. Some examples are:

• +1 consumable – Add a number to your rolls, a 2 can now become a 3, a 4 can now become a 5 etc.
• Flip a die – A 2 can become a 5, a 1 becomes a 6 and so on. In case you didn’t know (I certainly didn’t), the sum of these two numbers is always 7
• Reroll all dice – aren’t happy with what you got, use a consumable to try again

The best part of Grimroll is the moment when you start chaining together these consumables with rolls and you suddenly cross out 6-7 boxes with just 3 rolled dice. 

Instead of simply dealing damage to 3 boxes and killing a single enemy you could use them to gain extra consumables that can then give you extra hits on specific die, or a specific item. On top of this you might end up with several bad rolls that can then be modified to what you need. It’s this “just one more hit” mindset that the game puts you in that becomes very rewarding once executed.

No health bars, no problem

In most games, enemies always have a standard health bar, and your goal is to deal a certain amount of damage to them with your attacks until they die. Those attacks eventually evolve into specific targets on an enemy or specific timings that you must be mindful of, or they even mean using specific abilities or countering. In Grimroll however, there is no health bar, there are rows and columns to clear and each of them has an enemy intent that you can block or a reward you can get. For example, an enemy can have a row that once crossed out will reward the player with extra gold, or a consumable, or disable a specific intent that will deal more damage to a player. There are also rows and columns which must be crossed out to kill an enemy so it’s up to the player to figure out if they want additional rewards or just a quick kill. Eventually enemies get more and more boxes and more and more intents that must be prioritized to survive.

Mashing things up

When you put several enemy types together and add different enemy intents the entire fight becomes a challenging puzzle you must solve. For starters you must weigh up doing direct damage to enemies’ vs using your dice for your own item rewards. Some rewards could give you more damage to enemies but might require an extra turn where you lose health. It’s this tradeoff that creates tight and engaging situations where you’re constantly weighing things.

The cardboard

In a typical game development process, we’d normally make a prototype that would take a programmer, a designer and an artist some time. However, Grimroll is a bit different. Since the game is inspired by board games, we made it with cardboard and that allowed us to identify issues, streamline the concept and produce a version that was fun and playable before a single line of code was written. This means that by the time we decide to convert it all to digital there will already be a proven concept that simply needs to be translated into another medium. When we finish the digitization process, it will open the design space a lot more.

Where do you go from here

Grimroll fully embraces its roguelike roots, with familiar features such as relics that change core mechanics, items to upgrade, and a procedurally generated map. But each new run will give you a different and fresh set of challenges based on all the choices you make, and that’s not even counting the various playable characters that we’ll save for one of the next blog posts. Until next time!