Grim Tides – Old School RPG

Grim Tides is a slick, made-for mobile RPG and the prequel to Grim Quest. As with that game, the interface is simple and more gamebook/text-base adventure like, but dungeons are grid-based with a range of random enemies and encounters. As the devs describe it, it’s “Old-school RPG goodness in a new package”.

As with the first game you have a regular health/HP bar and also a “Morale” bar. If this drops too low you start going insane. You can drink various consumables to raise it, and there is some eq you find that can randomly restore a point as you move through each dungeon level.

The game does get considerably harder after the second dungeon area, and you might end up using up most of your consumables (the shop has a limited and random restock after each dungeon trip) but you can return to the earlier dungeons to grind a bit and store up more healing potions etc.

One thing I hugely recommend from the outset is getting the larger inventory perk. Inventory space is very tight in this game. You later get to unlock a few more slots but it takes a while to reach that level, and you’ll want to collect maximum loot for maximum money. Consumables don’t stack.

One thing to note: the IAP to unlock the full game is separate from the character-pack IAP. Given the cost of the character pack – twice the price of the unlock pack – I wrongly assumed it would include the full game unlock, as with most other games that use an unlock model. So this game is actually quite expensive.

‘m not sure I would recommend the character pack at the current price, the eq in it isn’t super amazing, and you find it for yourself anyway as you get into the third dungeon area. I was also cautious with coins and can confirm that you won’t need the pack’s 50k coins upfront to play the game perfectly fine and will eventually earn enough to get all the skills etc you want. If you want to unlock and try out every kind of skill/combat style from the start, then you will probably need the money.

Links:
AppStore
Official site