The gaming community can sometimes be incredibly toxic. This toxicity rises to nuclear waste levels when article comment sections dive into what qualifications a person must have to be a “real gamer.” The picture search style of gameplay offered by Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride is often criticized for catering to the casual gamer. I believe the only definition of a true gamer is someone that plays games, and Grim Legends is a good game that should not be brushed off.
Artifex Mundi is well known for creating puzzle adventure games like Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink as well as Enigmatis, both available on Xbox One. The gameplay in all Artifex Mundi games follows the same structure. After the opening cutscene, I took control of my character and looked at a scene on the screen. By interacting with the environment, I was able to find a hook to grab a rope that was pulling on my carriage. I then found a coin to unstick some scissors that I used to cut that rope. This freed the carriage and introduced me to my cat companion that I saved with a scarf hidden on a chest.
This all sounds super convoluted because it is. Grim Legends is heavily story-driven and the plot is progressed through solving these puzzles found in each scene. Once I collected all the random parts to get the carriage back on the road, I was able to leave the scene and see a new setting. In the new setting I was awarded a map that made traveling between scenes even easier.
Each scene and set piece was very different than the last. They were beautifully drawn, using an immense amount of vibrant colors that really made the world feel whimsical and magical. The strange, colorful statues that littered the environment were juxtaposed against the decaying pile of human bones laid next to them. It was very clear that the world I was traversing was both unsafe and serene.
As mentioned before, control was taken away from me on occasion to provide prose through cutscenes. During some of these cutscenes, performance would drop significantly. The screen would chug forward like a Telltale game, turning the cinematic into a slide show. This did not happen on every story point. While it does not give Grim Legends a pass, I am willing to overlook this for the most part as I never once experienced this while I was in control.
Performance while playing Grim Legends was perfect. Traveling from one scene to the next had almost no loading. While fast-traveling with the map, I would click on a location and be transferred there and be back in control in under 5 seconds. The cursor selected the correct items in the picture-puzzles, which relieved any instances of frustration during the clutter searching mini-games. If I did get stuck on a puzzle, a simple click up on the D-pad used my hint feature that showed me my next move. Overall, the systems ran very well on Xbox.
The puzzles in Grim Legends were made up of four main types. The first type involved using items in the environment to progress the level forward. These items were also rewarded by completing the other three puzzle types. My example earlier of getting the carriage back on the road was of this first type. The second type was when I approached a table that was littered with items and a list below the table showed twelve to fifteen item names that I had to collect. After collecting all the items in the picture, I was awarded a story-related item used in the first puzzle type. The third puzzle structure involved mini-games in which an objective was met by rotating items on a stationary board to collect balls, ignite candles, or unlock doors. And the final puzzle involved using a recipe and a list of ingredients to concoct special potions and items used in the story.
While it may seem that only four different puzzle models would become repetitive, they are varied enough that no two puzzles feel the same. The entire gameplay experience lasted around four hours through the main campaign, and another one hour in the attached epilogue. I found this to be an acceptable amount of time for a game of this caliber, even though the difficulty was incredibly low.
Summary
Fans of the puzzle genre have a lot of options on the Xbox One, and I am not sure if Grim Legends: The Forsaken Bride will be their first choice. The overall low difficulty of the puzzles, the short game time, and the stuttering cutscenes may be a huge turn off for many. However, if they give Grim Legends a try, they will find a game that visually is very enjoyable. I found problem solving in the game to be worthwhile and incredibly fulfilling. I only hope Grim Legends 2 and 3 make it onto the Xbox One.
Joshua was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 42 articles across game reviews, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.