Grindstone Review (Wired Nomad)
First played Grindstone during the game demo Steam event. Was immediately hooked. After realizing it was made by Capybara Games, I felt compelled to pay full price on Steam for support. Even though the game was was on Apple Arcade for free. I figured, I loved a similar match three type game by CAPY; Critter Crunch. And the Steam features were something I felt had enough value to justify my support.
However, I should have taken the feature on Apple Arcade as a hint of the target audience. The mobile game community has a reputation of endless games that don't really require skill or increase in difficulty. Designed to suck the user in with the insinuation that the levels keep progressing, and they are going somewhere.
Grindstone starts strong with a hand drawn art style, and a video which leads you to believe there may be a story unfolding. But there really isn't a story. You simply grind through areas, each with there own new element, and finish out with a boss. They have added this weapon and amor element to add to the rogue like feel of the game. It sounds interesting enough. And at the beginning it is pretty amusing.
But the problem the problem is the game just doesn't change from the first moment you play. It gets boring and tiresome quickly. If there were a story it would help remove the repetition of doing the same thing over and over again. The difficulty never seems to ramp up unless RNG screws you. In which case you can just reload and the crisis is averted. And the weapons and armour are hardly clever. I actually stuck with the same gear for almost the entire game, even after getting the "elite" gear at the end.
Honestly the only reason I finished was because I felt like I had already invested so much time, I wanted to see if anything changed or got harder. But in the end the game is the same almost the entire way through, with one level feeling slightly harder, and the next feeling like the very first level. The game is basically a classic match three game. Pointless, endless, and mindless. But the joke is on me for not seeing through the graphical polish to the empty core.