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Grim Fandango: Your Destiny… is to Purchase this Game.

Grim Fandango is a true gaming classic, and often touted as one of the greatest point & click games ever made, even if it was also the reaper that felled the genre. Although, like any old game, the bones this remaster is built on are a bit rough, this game is as eternal as a soul in the afterlife. Now it’s time for me to make like Manny and implore you to buy this game.

Steam Deck Support:
I played it 90% docked, but with correct setup, the trackpads make this game easily playable, and it feels almost natural to play a point & click that way. I don’t think I need to comment on how well it runs.

Grim Fandango is a game that has been stuck with me since I played it as a kid, believing it was never going to hold a candle to the masterpiece that was Monkey Island. The game’s vibe was just so unique and its premise so wild, that my brain gave up trying to compartmentalise the experience, created a new core memory instead, then sat down for a drink. It’s hard to write an elevator pitch for what Grim fandango is: It’s a weird blend of cultures and ideas that draw from film noir, art deco and latin american folklore. Manny Calavera, a failing afterlife salesman for the DoD (Department of Death) is forced by his conscience into an unwitting adventure across the land of the dead, spanning multiple years.

Four Years in Heaven
Let me tell you about that vibe. People will quote Mirror’s Edge and Skyrim as examples of how art direction ages better than graphical fidelity, but in my mind Grim Fandango is the purest example of that. Remaster or not, this game looks as beautiful as the day it released.

A benefit of using a static image as each map is that it allows the creators to play with composition and lighting in a way that would normally be undermined by player control. Pre-rendered scenery also gives the devs better control over lighting, and here they have leveraged that opportunity to such an effect that it would make a ray tracing core blush. Often, I find point & click games don’t make enough use of this opportunity, but not Grim Fandango. The developers are constantly playing with camera angle and shot size, drawing inspiration from the same cinema the game constantly pays homage to. Examples abound: shots from Manny’s sleazy office building are reminiscent of CCTV footage, while those from lonely bars place you in the seat of a tired and nameless patron.

Film noir’s influence is hard at work making every scene as brooding and mysterious as possible, but there are other influences too. Grim Fandango somehow blends the grayscale of film noir with the explosive colour of a Mexican holiday in a way so natural that I just assumed the two were made for each other. Amongst all of these huge successes in creative direction, Grim Fandango’s soundtrack manages to stand out. Like everything else in the game, the score is an eclectic mix of influences ranging from sombre mariachi, through Hitchcock-esque orchestra, to smoky jazz. It’s hard to write about how well the music works given it’s a medium I have scant knowledge of, but the impact here is certainly felt. Grim Fandango's score supercharges a game that is already dripping with atmosphere into something even modern games struggle to match. I do wish the music was blended a little better though: Songs restart every time you change screens, which means unless you stop to listen, a lot of ambient tracks won’t be heard all the way through. In particular, Manny’s demonic companion Glottis has a secret performance so good that I had to double check the voice actor wasn’t moonlighting as a blues vocalist.

You Might as well Enjoy the Trip
Of course, Grim Fandango’s story has aged like a bottle of Marillo de Oro. Manny starts out trying to sell the recently deceased tickets on the number 9 express to heaven. He then discovers the tickets, and the job that sells them, are part of a rabbit hole of corruption that goes so deep it plumbs the literal depths of the ocean.
This is a story straight out of Casablanca, one sporting naïve heroes, sleazy salesmen, mob plots and La Revolución. It would be boring if Grim Fandango didn’t tell the story so masterfully, and the recognisable tale being told gives the player an anchor of familiarity to cling to in an otherwise alien world.
Along with the story, Grim Fandango’s writing is just masterful in general. Tim Schafer’s razor wit adds a necessary level of playfulness to the otherwise serious story, much like the colours of Día de los Muertos add life to the game’s otherwise shadowy aesthetic. As mentioned earlier, this game is so layered that it cuts across all ages without ever feeling like a sacrifice was made. As a kid, Glottis’s slapstick escapades had me rolling, while adult me is nearly in tears after accidentally forming a worker bee labour movement.

Point & click gameplay often just amounts to puzzles, and even though these are the backbone of Grim Fandango’s gameplay, they’re also where the game tends to fall flat. The Puzzles relying on classic point & click design, notably all of part 2 are fantastic, if a little hard: one hilarious puzzle requires you to exploit glottis’ overindulgence in alcohol to force him to vomit a pool of liquid you can then freeze, disarming a devious domino-based trap for example. Sadly Grim Fandango also has a lot of puzzles relying on its awkward proto-3D movement, possibly as an attempt to force the genre into a third dimension to keep up with the times. These puzzles, and the movement they are based on, are as obtuse as they are frustrating. The camera seems to arbitrarily switch perspectives, confusing your movement even further. Furthermore, Grim Fandango has an absolutely shocking number of timing-based puzzles, which are never a good idea in point & click games. Luckily the game stopped short at causing me to rapidly deconstruct my keyboard, but the fact it got so close is something to be wary of.

The Land of the Dead as a concept is so well developed that it feels like the IP has been around for way longer than a single game. There are so many ideas and influences at every turn that I’m amazed its creators were able to contain them and prevent them from becoming overbearing. Some of my favourite ideas in particular are the use of fast-growing plants as weaponry, the “business scythes” used by the DoD, and the Aztec-inspired pyramid and gatekeeper serving as the final crossing to the underworld.

People throw the word “classic” around often enough that it has lost its true meaning. That said, if any game is a classic then Grim Fandango is, a classic that shines as an example of the heights a now much less prevalent genre once reached. Indeed, as good as Grim Fandango was, it was also a near commercial failure, and one of the reasons Lucasarts moved away from the genre. Grim Fandango is a ride on the Number 9 Express to point & click heaven, and so the only question left is whether you want to buy a ticket?


6/6 – Masterpiece