Grimoire Groves

Grimoire Groves was provided by Stardust/Future Friends Games for review. Thank you!

This review was created using both an LCD and OLED Steam Deck.

Before the commencement of Steam Next Fest, I had the opportunity to delve into the Grimoire Groves demo. This game, a delightful concoction of the beloved roguelike genre with home decoration and farming elements, presents a unique and refreshing take on gaming. I enjoyed the demo and the full release, although several of my concerns from the demo build have not been addressed in time for launch. Despite this, it is a decent enough experience on the Steam Deck.

With the roguelike genre taking all shapes and forms over the years, I appreciate the route the developers have taken with their game, and it has some twists I haven’t seen very often. I would describe Grimoire Groves as a cozy game with cute critters and silliness, with a quest to find the most magical pair of socks in the world. I do not often get to hunt down socks while playing my video games, so this is a refreshing change.

In Grimoire Groves, you play Primrose, a happy, excitable witch, on the first day of the all-important witch apprenticeship. To carry out her tasks, she arrives at her childhood home with her Aunt Lavender in the sprawling Grimoire Groves, but the years have not been kind to the region. All the magical life she knew, from the plant creatures to the spirits, is missing, and the once-grand forest is forlorn. Now that her niece has returned home, the time for change is now.

The goal is simple: restore the Grimoire Groves while learning everything from your Aunt. The dialogue is silly and full of heart, and I immensely enjoyed the eccentric characters in the game. There is no voice acting, and characters talk in what I now call ‘animal crossing’ gibberish. Although you can fast-track dialogue cutscenes, it's just as annoying as it is in Animal Crossing.

The gameplay loop is similar to many roguelikes. Primrose must delve into the endless, magical forests, feeding the plant creatures and harvesting as many materials as possible. There is no combat, although plants will hurt her if they stay attached to her for too long, so you need to dodge and weave your magical powers effectively to survive. It is not a challenging game by design, and I found it satisfying. There are many extra witch spells to unlock, and the critter encyclopedia is fun to fill out.

The gameplay is simple, but it is part of what made me feel at ease in the game. The levels are not very long, but they are full of fauna and bright colors, and the environment made me feel like I was exploring the forests in real time.

Seeds and materials can be returned to the central Grove to unlock new areas in the hub, powers, and customize your hut. It makes for a surprisingly enjoyable experience, and while I never felt entranced by the gameplay, it is relaxing enough to keep me entertained. However, the unlocks are quite grindy, and collecting enough resources for the home area was annoying over time.

The performance is surprisingly heavy for a game like this, and even when playing the Steam Deck without any restrictions to TDP, performance tanks in the central hub. While performance increased during the narrow dungeon levels, it isn't very reassuring to see that my optimization concerns from the demo have not been addressed for the full release. Oddly, the release build felt worse than the demo.

Following the performance, there are very few ways to change settings. All we have is screen resolution, which defaults to 240p resolution for some strange reason. I also found their selection of font color to be odd. A white outline in a white font makes the dialogue hard to read.

Grimoire Groves - Steam Deck Performance

There are good points in favor of Grimoire Groves, as I found the game reasonably solid on the Steam Deck. The game plays great with a controller and keyboard layouts, which translates well into the Deck, but there's no way to customize controls or graphical options, with only resolution to rely on.

Recommended Settings

Even with the full 15-watt TDP the Steam Deck can apply, Grimoire Grove's main home area is intensive, and I could barely hit even 40FPS on average. Things improve in the dungeon areas, although it would still dip occasionally when very clingy plant critters surround Primrose. With this in mind, a 30FPS framerate lock makes the most sense, and it is the preferred settings for smooth gameplay. This brought down the battery drain to around 10W - 13W, gaining an extra hour or so of battery life.

The lowest I could bring the TDP down without sacrificing too much performance in the central hub was a 5W TDP, with a 30fps/40hz Refresh rate on the LCD Steam Deck and a 30FPS/90hz refresh rate on the Steam Deck OLED. Oddly, the power draw was significantly different between the two models. The OLED averaged 8 watts with these settings, while the LCD hovered around 10 watts. This is likely due to the OLED model drawing less power with that panel, though I'm no expert on its technical aspects.

Dialogue can be complex to read on the Deck because of the small text and the bizarre design choice of using a white font with a white outline. There is no way to change it either.

Accessibility

Grimoire Groves is playable in English, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Portuguese - Brazil, Portuguese - Portugal, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish - Latin America.

You can adjust the screen resolution, change the screen mode, and adjust the volume, but that’s all you can do in the settings. There are no colorblind options, font size options, graphical settings, or X and Y axis inverting. You cannot change controls if the default bindings are not to your taste. The lack of accessibility options in Grimoire Groves is disappointing, but the game has a relaxed/casual mode if you find Primrose collapsing from exhaustion too often.

Overall, the accessibility options in Grimoire Groves are a disappointment.

Conclusion

Grimoire Groves is a refreshing take on the standard roguelike genre, and I genuinely enjoy the core gameplay loop. The visuals are nice, and while the game is simple, it plays to its strengths. I also really enjoy building up the little encyclopedia that catalogs what you find in the Grove. The lack of accessibility options and problems I had with performance was disappointing in the release build, but these can be fixed with time. Despite these issues, Grimoire Groves is still a good performer on the Steam Deck.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back.