American McGee's Grimm
Preview
Make Grimm's fairy tales grim again
by Vyle
previewed on PC
Twisting old stories
American McGee is a man with a furtive imagination. From Quake to Alice in Scrapland and Bad Day LA, his games have displayed interesting ideas, and yet for all their promise and potential, some of them have proven to be disappointing. However, while the critical response to some of his work has been mixed, there has always been a certain charm and hidden quality aching to be released.
Grimm, however, could well be the game that vindicates American McGee and puts his name back on the map. Living up to his reputation for having intriguing ideas, Grimm is set to be a 24 part episodic game, with the first episode due out via Game Tap in July. Like Alice before, Grimm sees American McGee and his studio, Spicy Horse, flipping fairy tales on their head and drowning the innocence of Disney into an abyss of twisted and dark imagery.
Of course it could be said that they're merely restoring the tales to their original state. As it happens, the tales that came to be known as those of the Grimm Brothers were originally pretty twisted. Over the years in successive editions, the Grimm Brothers made the stories a bit more child friendly, although the final editions still contained plenty of decapitations and other violent subject matter.
From fairy tales to deep darkness
American McGee knows the history and censorship that turned the tales more and more child-friendly, and has made this fact into a key part of the game. See, in Grimm, the fairy tales have been turned a bit TOO nice. The danger and all the darkness has been removed. A fairytale is a cautionary tale, where bad things happen to those who ignore the lesson, so without the darkness, there is no warning. To remedy this, Grimm sets out to bring the blackness back.
To suit the changing tone, the levels have been designed with a light and dark side. Take the Little Red Riding Hood, for instance. In the light version of her story, she is a stylish, crimson hatted beauty, but in the dark version, she's a naked, emaciated husk. Even the scenery turns bad, with a harmless pot hanging over a camp-fire transforming into a baby on a spit. Grass blackens underfoot, trees become gnarled – imagine the difference between the past and future of Hyrule from Ocarina of Time, and you get the idea of how the stories change.
Grimm, the hero
As was mentioned above, Grimm's job is to restore darkness, and he achieves this simply by walking through the levels. While gameplay specifics are yet to be revealed, it has been revealed that the entire game can be played with the mouse, and that each episode is a 30 minute chunk of game, broken into 5 minute sections. As each episode progresses, Grimm will find that each level becomes more difficult, with hidden sections, trickier jumps and tougher enemies blocking his full exploration. While levels can be completed with 'minimum darkness' the score attack-like nature of the levels will be sure to have players coming back for more.
