Grimroll

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• Announcements·2 Sept 2026Official

  Back from Gamescom!

  A short one this week. We're back from our yearly vacation and are already deep in development of the game again.In case you were wondering how the actual playable version is coming along, we spent a few days showing it off at Courage, a small indie showcase running alongside Gamescom in Cologne.Putting a build in front of strangers is the fastest feedback we get. You can watch someone pick up the game and know within ten seconds whether a mechanic explains itself or not. Turns out we could use (better) onboarding on the character select screen or maybe even a tutorial, so that's getting worked on. We now have a full page of notes and a much shorter list of excuses.Here's the Courage page with the full lineup of games that were shown. There's a sale running alongside it, so it's worth a scroll even if you weren't in Cologne:https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45716300/sale/CourageCologne2026If you got a chance to play Grimroll at the show, please don't hesitate to get in touch and let us know what you think. The good, the bad, and the confusing. We read all of it.That's it for now. Next post we're back to the usual art and design updates.Wanna keep in touch with us? Well, make your way over to our Discord. Over there you can ask any questions you might have about the game. And of course, Wishlist the game here on Steam!
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• Announcements·14 Aug 2026Official

  Home is where the dice are

  We’re back with another Art post today, and this time we’re showing you two places: one you’ll want to stay in, and one that will absolutely want you gone.Let’s start at home. Gaze upon this super early concept of the Hub, or as we call it, Baba’s Hut. This is where you’ll catch your breath between runs, so we’re filling it with different items, cabinets and a collection of trinkets all over the place. Every shelf is a chance to tell you something about her without her having to say a word.You’ll notice the colors are a bit… loud. That’s on purpose. At this stage we block everything out in flat colors so we can tell what belongs to what, where your eye lands first and whether the fireplace is really pulling focus the way it should. We promise the final version will look better.Here’s another pass at the same space from a different angle, with Baba parked right where she belongs: across the table from you, waiting on your next roll.Now, we’re currently all on a well-deserved summer break and given all the recent heat waves we figured it would be nice to get away from the summery and hot weather of Midsummer and show you something else.This is an early concept of Winterchime, the new biome of Grimroll. A frozen, desolate forest teeming with mischievous creatures that punish anyone who disturbs the peace of winter, and just to be fair about it, anyone trying to stave off winter’s cold sting too. The palette was the fun part. Midsummer was all warm gold and heavy crops, so Winterchime had to go the other way: pale greens, cold blues and a lot of empty white space. Bare branches instead of flowers. Hills that just keep going. We wanted it to feel quiet in a way that makes you nervous rather than calm.Hope you enjoyed this quick overview. Wanna keep in touch with us? Well, make your way over to our Discord. Over there you can ask any questions you might have about the artistic direction of the game. And please Wishlist the game here on Steam!
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• Announcements·31 Jul 2026Official

  Rewards, Infusions and the Chain

  One of the main mechanics we have in Grimroll is getting rewards for crossing out boxes. The rewards take the shape of different consumables, instant additional hits on other boxes and even more dice. There's plenty of dice types but today we wanted to focus on the rewards specifically.The way you progress through the game and gain upgrades is by upgrading your items. Initially we had just 3 items that you'd equip, and we felt that this would be enough to start you off. It quickly became apparent that there wasn't a lot of decision making going on. You'd pick the 3 best items you could find and either get some build going off them or you'd die. We wanted more control, so we made each item have 3 slots of individual rewards, this gave us granularity and made progress more incremental.It created a UX nightmare for us. How do you add upgrades and slot them in 12 different places across 3 categories while also allowing players to swap them around. We're still sorting this one out.Number go up!Having rewards that trigger an instant hit on some other area of the game was a huge part of the first playtest we did. Items there didn't have infusions so you would cross out a box on one item and then get an extra hit on another as a reward, then that other item hit gave you an extra hit on another item, or an enemy…and this basically spiraled into something we eventually called "the chain". It made you feel good because you spent one die and got several extra hits out of it.We initially removed it from the game because we wanted the player to always be in control over when and how this happens. Our solution at the time was to instead give you a consumable item that would do the same thing, but you would get to decide when to use it. You would roll an extra die when you felt it was best.Turns out this slowed the game down. Most of us want that reward right away and this made it so you would have to drag your mouse to the consumables area, click on it and then use the die it roll...
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• Announcements·17 Jul 2026Official

  This baba is not you!

  We’re back with another Art post today. If you didn’t notice the scary looming figure in the key art (first of all, how?), she’s the Crone, or as we like to call her locally: Baba!Here are some of Baba’s concepts, which we took in some weird directions. We had her looking kind, monstrous or even wildly strange. We wanted her to seem menacing at first sight but, the more you get to know her, the more you see her comical and weirdly nice side.We had to pin down the legendary apron and headscarf combo out of respect for every Balkan grandma. We also asked, „Should she even be human?” Some concepts have bird legs, antlers or even branches growing out of her hair, tying her to the forest.No matter what her form, she’ll tell your tale as you cast your dice. Here’s the one we chose for now.Other characters we showcased this month include the Polevik and Swargling. Now, a bit of a heads up… Old Balkan and Slavic folklore was often told orally through generations, so details got dropped over the years. The Polevik is often described as “Hair of straw, 2 different colored eyes and wearing white or black” you can see how we took artistic freedom with this, so it isn’t just a scary monster, but something more interesting. Same goes for the Swargling, described only as “being woolly like a sheep, dirty and having horns” so we made it look like a wild creature some of you might even want to adopt. The summer harvest is a clear inspiration for the biome and its inhabitants with all the crops and flowers. Hope you enjoyed this quick overview. Wanna keep in touch with us? Well, make your way over to our Discord. Over there you can ask any questions you might have about the artistic direction of the game. And please Wishlist the game here on Steam!
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• Announcements·3 Jul 2026Official

  Live to roll another die

  Grimroll is a very simple game to understand, each turn you will:Use a die to cross out the box that has the same number to defeat enemies.Gain rewardsRepeatVarietyIn the playtest we had the basic white die and some ways to manipulate it (consumables). We needed a way to create hook mechanics and different playstyle archetypes. So, we introduced the advanced dice that did more specific things. All the advanced dice have one thing in common, they can hit any number, and they all leave a hook that another ability can latch on to.So, not to constrain ourselves, we added 6 different types of dice 😊WoundBurnRotPoisonStealCurseHere’s a few examplesWound Dice The wound as an effect is a hook. It stays on the grid until triggered. Wound builds are great for placing a lot of wounds on the enemy and then triggering all of them at once for lots of rewards.Burn DiceAll the numbers that are burning are removed, leaving a blank box at the end of your turn (that you can cross with any number) and the fire spreads to adjacent boxes.The burn die gives us several hooks we can play around with. Burning boxes, Blanks boxes and when the burn ticks. With burn dice you can create builds that focus on removing the box numbers quickly.Too many diceI won’t list all the others but as you can imagine, adding all of this was quite a lot and it forced us to rethink the role of each of them. All these new mechanics made the game slower, and at times even overwhelming.We liked the experience, but it was a stark contrast to what we had before. Turns used to flow much quicker and there was clear momentum that never forced you to brain burn and over-analyze each roll.So, we reduced the amount of unique die types a playable character could have. To try and concentrate on just having one or two of these on top of the regular white and black die.This solved the problem and improved the flow, figuring out one or two die combinations is a lot easier than figuring out 6 or 7.But something was still off. Ea...
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